A Mother in the Hard Times

The Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother, enjoys numerous titles from her children: Queen of Heaven, Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, Solace of Migrants, … Of all these, the saddest, perhaps, is Mother of Sorrows. And yet, the Church does not shy away from this title. In fact, a whole month—September—has traditionally been dedicated to this particular title of our Lady.

Why would the Church encourage us to call on Mary using this name? Because in this face of our Lady, we see the common lot of all who live this side of heaven: sorrow, pain and desolation. This title reminds us that the earthly life of the Glorious Queen of Heaven was one of suffering, much like the lives of all of us who are still on our pilgrim journey. This title brings our Lady closer still, to us who are “mourning and weeping in this vale of tears” because of illnesses, calamities, financial problems, disputes, insecurities, addictions, persecutions, war, hunger, and so much more.

Devotion to our Lady of Sorrows is closely linked to the devotion to our Lord's own suffering. It is a way of entering more deeply into the sorrowful passion that led to our redemption; meditating on the sufferings of our Blessed Mother is the most perfect gateway, for she lived and experienced each moment of our Lord’s sufferings for us. The Church has traditionally meditated on seven sorrows of our Lady, and all of them, without exception, are linked to the mystery of the Cross. It is no wonder that the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows (15^th September) is celebrated immediately after the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross (14^th September).

From the earliest moments of the life of the Holy Family, it was revealed to our Lady that the life of her Son would be a life of sorrow, a life that would earn him the title Man of Sorrows. This was particularly revealed to her by the saintly Simeon at the presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:34-35). In prophesying the suffering destiny of her Son, Simeon also told our Lady that a sword would pierce her own heart. This revelation of her Son’s future suffering was the very first sword, the first sorrow.

Then the tyrant Herod, his reign apparently threatened, wanted to murder Jesus. Mary and Joseph, with the infant Jesus, had to flee from Bethlehem to a foreign land (Matthew 2:13-15). There’s no telling what dangers and hardships they had to endure enroute—long-distance travel in the first century was nothing compared to what we know it to be now. But perhaps all this was a mere shadow compared to the constant fear that must have tortured our Lady’s heart. There was an all-powerful man after her little child’s life. This was the second sorrow.

Years later, the little boy Jesus got lost from his parents in Jerusalem (Luke 2:41-51). Three days, Mary searched for her Son, with Joseph. And on the third day, he told them he must be about his Father’s business, Mary, who had kept the words of Simeon in her heart, recognized that he had begun his mission which would end in his sacrificial death: the third sorrow.

This mission eventually culminated in the way of the Cross. And Mary, whose heart burnt with a love for Jesus more than she even loved herself, witnessed all of it, from the trials to the scourging, to the point when she met her Son, overburdened and bruised, defiled and abused, his face all rent and flowing with blood, and his shoulder laden with the Cross on the way to Calvary (Luke 23:26-31). How she must have wished for some way to ease his pain, to suffer instead of him! Yet all God permitted her to do at this point was to suffer with him in her heart and let God’s will be done. This was her fourth sorrow.

She walked, following him every painful step of the way, and watched as the nails were hammered through his body. She saw him being raised up high on the Cross for all of us to see. In the time of Jesus, death on a cross was the most shameful form of death. Even Roman citizens who committed grave crimes were not crucified. In the eyes of everyone, Jesus, the so-called Messiah, had died the most shameful and humiliating death. No one would want to be related to the naked man on the cross. Yet Mary stood next to him, as his Mother (John 19:25-27). To watch her Son die so painfully, this was her fifth sorrow.

Mary had once carried Jesus in her arms, a small, helpless babe wrapped in swaddling clothes—the God who had become man—in Bethlehem. It was a joyful mystery! Now, she carried him, taken down from the cross, a lifeless, immolated corpse (see John 19:38). She had once, in deep poverty, yet with great joy, laid him in a manger while the angels sang their Gloria on a nearby mount, in the light of a mysterious star. Now she laid him in a stone-cold tomb, and left him there in the dark (cf. John 19:39-42)—the sixth and seventh sorrows.

Our Lady’s life surely had more than just seven sorrows. But these offer great points of reference and meditation on how she received and responded to those moments in her life when a sword pierced through her heart. She always allowed for the will of God to be done. She always remained that humble maid who had once said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). This is what makes Mary the greatest model for us who must suffer at one point or other in the course of our life. The Church has always proclaimed Christ crucified (1 Corinthians 1:23) because it is by this crucifixion that we are redeemed. Daily, Christ calls each one of us to carry our own cross and follow him (Matthew 10:38), meaning that we will often find ourselves crucified. It is in those moments that we need to remember that our Mother stands by us, next to our cross, suffering with us. There are times when her smile, her caress may take away the pain or change the situation all the same, but sometimes, in the mystery of God’s will, all she can do is to be there with us, reminding us always that it is in such moments that we are most like her Son, the Man of Sorrows.

You can download here a pdf guide on how to recite the Rosary of Our Lady of Sorrows, a devotion encouraged by our Lady herself in her apparitions to St Bridget of Sweden and at Kibeho, Rwanda.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

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