Mary’s Sorrow

Friends in the Lord,

after yesterday celebrating the Triumph of the Cross, we remember today our Sorrowful Mother. The saints tell us, that while everyone must suffer in this life, the suffering would be greater if we could see the pain that is going to come in the future – we would suffer it all, by anticipation. But God shows us mercy and conceals the trials that lay ahead.

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But this was not the case with the Blessed Virgin. For Mary, Simeon foretold that her Son would suffer persecutions and opposition – ‘behold, this child is set for a sign that shall be contradicted, and a sword of sorrow shall pierce thy soul.’ The Blessed Virgin herself told St. Matilda, that when Simeon said this, all her joy was changed into sorrow. Although Mary already knew that Jesus would die for the world, she came to know even more completely the cruel death that awaited her poor Son.

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What grief must she continually have suffered, seeing this dear and good Son always near her, nursing at the breast, running and playing, hearing from him words of eternal life, and seeing his virtuous character.

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Mary revealed to St. Bridget that while on earth, there was not an hour in which this grief did not pierce her heart. ‘As often as I looked at my Son, as often as I saw his perfect hands and feet, so often, I thought of how he would be crucified.

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As often as Mary dressed her son in his little clothes, the more she thought of the day, when they would be torn off in violence. St. Alphonsus says, that as a stag, wounded by an arrow carries the pain wherever he goes, so did the prophecy of Simeon wound the heart of Mary, and stay with her wherever she went.

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And so it was Christ himself, who was the arrow in the heart of Mary.

Why did you go through all of this O Good Mother? Because you knew that by the death of your Son, we, your other children, would be able to live.