Our Lady of
Sorrows: A Meditation for the Feast.
Each year
we come to this celebration like a full stop.
It arrests
us, holds us, freezes us as we look inwardly at that scene we think we know so
well.
The Woman
and the Man,
the Mother
and the Son…
and the
Cross; always the Cross…
Mother of
Sorrows we call her and she is the Mother of Sorrow today, for her Son is not
just the God who is Love, but the God who is the Sorrow that Love becomes when
it is refused, rejected, even hated…
In a
universe of hate and betrayal she will be the one point of pure light, the one
point of pure love, the one point of pure sorrow over Sorrow’s pain.
Mother of
Compassion we call her. “Cum Passio” is the phrase at the root of this word; to
be with the suffering. For all she can do is be with Him in His Suffering and
long, as so many mothers have longed over countless ages, to end His suffering,
to take His place, to stand in the place of her child.
How many
war zones, sick beds, hospitals, prisons have been hallowed by such prayers
over the ages?
In a
universe of pain and suffering she does not look away, she stands, strong for
Him who has become weakness itself in this moment, that the wound at the heart
of it all may be healed. She chooses yet again, as surely as she chose in the
light of the Angel all those years ago. She utters a Yes once again, this time
not with words but with presence. Words without presence mean nothing… but
presence, even when it is silent, is louder than thunder.
Mother of
the Seven Sorrows we call her. Her life graced and blessed has been punctuated
with pain. The pain of the moment and the pain of knowing, darkly at least,
what is coming. Seven great sorrows we name, but they are only the beginning.
Every mother knows sorrow… the sorrow of knowing that her child is not her own,
not really, not in their essence, and that they must be set free to become all
that they were meant to be. For her this natural letting go is revealed as a
graced begetting of blessedness anew. She will let Him go, she will let Him go
to His death and her faith will be the point of light and love that will call
Him home to her when first He rises. The prophecy of Simeon, the Flight to Egypt, the first Loss in the Temple, the Meeting on the Road, they will
all lead inevitably to the Cross, to holding her dead Son in her arms, to
entombing in the womb of the Earth the One she had carried safely in her own
womb. And yet, when all will be death and despair she will stand as Woman, as
Mother, as the faithful witness, as the one who walks the path of living
martyrdom, as the one who, on our behalf, believes past believing; doing this
as only a mother can, as only a woman can, winning the victory by the purest
kind of faith, unselfish Love.
Our Lady of
Sorrows we call her. Ours! Yes she is ours… for in the moment of her greatest
pain she says Yes to another, deeper call within her consecration. His last
words will bequeath His greatest gift. Present to Him with all her love, with
all her still strength and grace she is now ours too. Behold your Mother. This is
the generosity of God, of Grace, of Love itself… holding nothing back for
itself it gives its greatest gift away. This is the generosity of Mary that she
says Yes and accepts us all in the very moment of our greatest rejection of her
Son. At the pinnacle of hate she becomes the very first fruits of love, and
compassion, and peace, the place where the fruits of the Cross are first
tasted, the one through whom grace is liberated and the one in whose immaculate
heart, pierced in the piercing of her Son’s the song of our resurrection will
first be sung.
Our Lady of Sorrows, Mother of Compassion be with us and help us to carry our own Cross in faith and hope and love.
Pics above: The First is the famous rendering of Our Lady's face based upon the proportions of the Face of the Holy Shroud. The second is by Angela Yerber.
