The Sorrowful Mother Stood

Jan Styka – Maria

Last year, I made the decision to undertake the complete consecration to Jesus through Mary according to the method laid out by Saint Louis de Montfort. The consecration, which involves entrusting all of our merits to Our Lady in order to be protected and nourished by her, is a devotion I recommend to every Catholic – though it won’t be the precise focus of this piece. Saint Louis de Montfort recommends those who would do the consecration to select a Marian feast day on which to do it. My date of consecration was Our Lady of Sorrows, September 15, which considers the manifold sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary – who indeed experienced the longest and most painful martyrdom that ever was, or ever will be. 

“The Sorrowful Mother Stood” are the opening lines of the Stabat Mater, a hymn that recalls the sorrows of Our Lady traditionally attributed to the Franciscan friar Jacapone da Todi. It serves as the sequence (a hymn recited or chanted after the gradual which follows the epistle in the tridentine mass) for the feast of the Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary – one of only four sequences throughout the liturgical year. You may also recognize it from the stations of the cross, where some parishes choose to chant the hymn in-between the various considerations of Our Lord’s passion. The hymn is replete with powerful and lasting imagery, and does not shy away from the more grim aspects of salvation history: it seeks to make perfectly clear the effects of sin and its severe consequences. If nothing else, I recommend reading the hymn in its entirety, and meditating carefully on its admonitions and exhortations. 

In the West at least, the devotion seems to owe its origin to the Servite Order, founded in 1232 by seven young Tuscan friars. Five years after its foundation, the order took up the sorrows of Mary as their particular charism as they continued to develop some of the most characteristic devotions to Our Lady’s sorrows. Such include the Black Scapular of the Seven Dolours of Mary and the Novena to Our Sorrowful Mother. Also worthy of mention is the Litany to Our Lady of Sorrows, composed by Pope Pius VII during his captivity under Napoleon. The most notable of devotions to Our Lady of Sorrows, however, is undoubtedly the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows, which focuses on the seven principle sorrows of Our Lady – the Prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:34-35), the Flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13-14), the Loss of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:43-45), Our Lady Meeting Jesus on His Way to Calvary (Luke 23:27-29), Our Lady’s Standing under the Cross (John 19:25-27), Our Lord being taken down from the Cross (John 19:32-34), and the Burial of Our Lord following His Passion (John 19:41-42). A few meditations on these seven sorrows will compose the rest of our discussion, with some heavy inspiration from Saint Alphonsus Liguori’s writings on the subject.

“Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted. And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.” These are the words of Simeon to Our Lady, and indeed a sword would pierce Our Lady. Traditional imagery of Our Lady of Sorrows depicts her with seven swords lodged in her heart, representing her seven sorrows, and in fact, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows – before it was universally known as the feast of Seven Sorrows – was occasionally referred to as the “Transifixio”. Our Lord would certainly be contradicted, too, for instead of being heard, He would be declared a wicked blasphemer worthy of death – “and his own received Him not” (John 1:11).

Statue of the Seven Swords piercing Our Lady’s Heart in the Church of the Holy Cross, Salamanca, Spain

“Arise, and take the Child and His Mother, and fly into Egypt.”  Shortly after the birth of Our Lord, Herod seeks to kill him, forcing the Holy Family into exile in Egypt. “Must He then fly from men,” says Saint Albert, “who came to save men?” Indeed, it seems gravely unjust – but do we not force Our Lord into exile every time we, by mortal sin, force Him to flee from our soul? Saint Alphonsus recounts the story of sister Joanna of Jesus and Mary, who one day, upon meditating on the flight into Egypt, saw a vision of the child Jesus running from Herod’s army.  “O my Joanna, help Me,” He exclaimed, “conceal Me! I am Jesus of Nazareth; I am flying from sinners, who wish to kill Me, and persecute Me as Herod did. Do thou save Me.”

This meditation on sin culminates in the loss of Our Lord in the Temple. Saint Alphonsus notes that this was the greatest sorrow in Our Lady’s life, for in all her other trials, she at least had Our Lord. “He who is born blind feels but little the privation of the light of day”, writes Saint Alphonsus “but he who has once enjoyed it, and loses it by becoming blind, indeed suffers much.” Considering this, how great a hatred of sin ought we to have? How much sorrow should we feel when Our Lord is lost to us because we have forced Him to depart by mortal sin, or weakened His presence in our soul by means of venial sin? How eager ought we be to return to the state of grace, and firmly resolve to never offend Our Lord again? “My most amiable Mother,” prays Saint Alphonsus, “if through my fault thy Son is not yet returned to my soul, do thou obtain for me that I may find Him.”

Realizing that all mothers feel the suffering of their children as their own, we then proceed to Our Lord’s passion. If you have ever seen The Passion of the Christ, the scene where Mary goes to meet Christ as He carries His cross is probably burned into your memory. No one can deny the power of Our Lord’s suffering meeting with His mother’s gentle gaze – and so this impactcul dichotomy has understandably captured the mind of spiritual writers for centuries. “The more tenderly this Mother loved,” writes Richard of Saint Lawrence, “so much the more deeply she was wounded.” Indeed, the suffering of the Son is the suffering of the Mother. When Margaret, the daughter of Saint Thomas More, met her father on the way to his death, she fainted from grief. How much greater the grief of this sorrowful mother, whose love was neither tainted by sin and whose beloved Son never caused her even the slightest displeasure!

The next two sorrows encompass Our Lord’s crucifixion, His being pierced with a lance, and His being taken down from the cross. It is important to recall at this point that in the face of this great horror, Our Lady did not flee from Our Lord – as did many of the apostles – but instead drew closer. Let us not forget that when her beloved Son was faced with the cruelest torments – wrought at the hands of our own sins – Mary but loved Him as she always did, in His glory and in His shame. “Shame should have prevented thee,” says Saint Bonaventure, “for His disgrace was thine, since thou wert His Mother. At least, the horror of witnessing such a crime as the crucifixion of a God by His own creatures, should have prevented thee from going there.” But, the same saint answers, “Thy heart did not then think of its own sorrows, but of the sufferings and death of thy dear Son.” Here, Our Lady shines forth as an example for every Christian. When faced with the crosses of our life, we should not flee the scene of calvary, but rather draw closer to Our Lord, and – just as Our Lady did – adore at the cross.

Finally, we come to the Burial of Our Lord following His crucifixion. Our Lady was left bereft of a Son, deprived of her Spouse (making her a widow), and abandoned by her Father (making her an orphan). “O truly-begotten of God,” writes Saint Bernard, speaking in her name, “Thou wast to me a father, a son, a spouse: Thou wast my very soul! Now I am deprived of my father, widowed of my spouse, a desolate, childless Mother; having lost my only Son, I have lost all.” Here, at the sepulcher where the body of Our Lord was laid to rest, Our Lady left her heart buried too, next to her beloved Son.

At this point, it’s quite likely you’re not in terribly high spirits. But, perhaps there is one more consideration to share, which might give us a bit of hope. At the foot of Our Lord’s cross, Mary, rather than despising us sinners, prayed for us. Our Lady, knowing that it was we who had wrought the suffering of her beloved Son, did not revile us, but rather sought our salvation, knowing that the previously ignominious sign of the cross was thenceforward to be the sign of our salvation. “Weep, then, for thou hast reason to weep,” writes Saint Alphonsus, “Who can ever console thee? The thought alone, that Jesus by His death conquered hell, opened heaven until then closed to men, and gained so many souls, can console thee. From that throne of the cross He will reign in so many hearts, which, conquered by His love, will serve Him with love.” Our Lady revealed to Saint Bridget that, upon receiving Our Lord’s lifeless body from the cross, she closed His eyes, but could not close His arms, for they were outstretched to receive penitent sinners. How great is the love of Our Lady and Our Lord! We have sinned, and this is indeed very grave, but let us now with confidence go to His heart and, like Our Lady, refuse not to draw near to the cross, so that we may ask pardon for our offenses. Let us not forget that this is a pardon won by so many torments, and which form the basis of the most glorious martyrdom that ever was – the martyrdom of Our Lady.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.