{"id":24936,"date":"2009-09-15T13:06:21","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T17:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/09\/the-bvms-7-sorrows\/"},"modified":"2016-09-15T07:45:20","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T11:45:20","slug":"the-bvms-7-sorrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/09\/the-bvms-7-sorrows\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary’s 7 sorrows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Father, as your Son was raised on the cross, his\u00a0mother Mary stood by him, sharing his sufferings. May your Church be united with Christ in his suffering and death and so come to share in his rising to\u00a0new life, where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for\u00a0ever and ever. Amen.<\/i><\/p>\n

Today’s feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary follows\u00a0yesterday’s feast of the Triumph of the Cross. As the liturgical year\u00a0progresses we see some things change in the liturgical atmosphere as we\u00a0prepare, believe it or not, for the end of the liturgical year: our focus on\u00a0the Paschal Mystery of the Lord (i.e., the life, death, resurrection &\u00a0ascension of the Lord) becomes more present to us.<\/p>\n

\"Pieta<\/a><\/p>\n

Liturgically the Church dedicates\u00a0a day to the spiritual martyrdom of Mary, Jesus\u2019 own mother. The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows has not only a spiritual depth but a real human one: it strikes at the core of our heart. What human being goes through life\u00a0without some sort of pain? Like all mothers, Mary was wounded and pained at\u00a0various times in her life by the absence of her son and the pain and death he\u00a0had to suffer. No mother delights in her child’s misery, no mother sits by\u00a0while her child’s humanity is in jeopardy. Consider what the mothers of\u00a0soldiers go through waiting for her son or daughter to return from war. Imagine\u00a0the terrible, heart wrenching pain that many mothers felt when they were told\u00a0their child was killed in Iraq. I know of the pain my own paternal grandmother faced when her son was killed in a car accident more than 40 years ago; a pain that never truly healed nor spoken of\u2026<\/p>\n

The feast we observe today reminds us of the\u00a0humanity of not only Mary, but of Jesus. For as we know, Mary always points to\u00a0her son: the cross brought incredible suffering for Jesus while it saved all of\u00a0humanity by trampling down sin and death; Careful observing the suffering as Mary did requires our attention, too,\u00a0because Christ saved us in and through our humanity. This point is driven home\u00a0countless times a day as I walk past a replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta (see the pic above); I am\u00a0confronted with the sorrowing Mother Mary holding the dead body of her son in\u00a0her arms, the very arms which cuddled him as an infant.<\/p>\n

The Cistercian monks\u00a0and Servite friars have given the Church an apt liturgical feast to indicate\u00a0the depth of humanity Mary had in standing by her son, an experience foretold\u00a0by Simeon. The feast has also be called Our Lady of Compassion, yet another\u00a0intersection of theology and human reality.<\/p>\n

\n

Here are the seven sorrows of\u00a0Mary:
\n\"7<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:25-35)<\/li>\n
  2. The flight into Egypt (Matthew\u00a02:13-15)<\/li>\n
  3. Loss of the Child Jesus for three days (Luke 2:41-50)<\/li>\n
  4. Mary meets Jesus\u00a0on his way to Calvary (Luke 23:27-31; John 19:17)<\/li>\n
  5. Crucifixion and Death of\u00a0Jesus (John 19:25-30)<\/li>\n
  6. The body of Jesus being taken from the Cross (Psalm 130;\u00a0Luke 23:50-54; John 19:31-37)<\/li>\n
  7. The burial of Jesus (Isaiah 53:8; Luke 23:50-56;\u00a0John 19:38-42; Mark 15:40-47)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u00a0 Father, as your Son was raised on the cross, his\u00a0mother Mary stood by him, sharing his sufferings. May your Church be united with Christ in his suffering and death and so come to share in his rising to\u00a0new life, where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for\u00a0ever and … Continue reading Mary’s 7 sorrows<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[32075],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24936"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34006,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24936\/revisions\/34006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}