Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows, commemorating the suffering of Mary, the mother of Jesus. While this is a long-standing devotion in the Roman Catholic Church, it only popped up on my radar while I was preparing for my marriage four years ago. Since our wedding was to take place at a beautiful church by the same name, I decided that I would look into the devotion.
Seven Swords Piercing the Sorrowful Heart of Mary
in the Church of the Holy Cross, Salamanca, Spain
This devotion was spread by the Servite Order and St. Bridget of Sweden, and remembers the unique suffering of a mother/parent. The seven sorrows are:
- Prophecy of Simeon
- Flight into Egypt
- Loss of Jesus for Three Days/Finding him in the Temple
- Jesus carrying his Cross
- The crucifixion of Jesus
- Jesus Being Taken Down from the Cross
- Jesus being laid in the Tomb
I am not sure if this says something about my psyche or about the turmoil in my life when I started praying the Servite Rosary/Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows, but I found much more comfort in it than I ever have the standard Dominican Rosary. This was a time in my life where in roughly a year I had an extremely sick relative, a long distance move to a new city, a new job, my marriage, purchased my first house, and my new wife became pregnant with our first child. While I don’t claim that I can fully understand what it is like to be the Mother of God, I can say I survived a very stressful (hopefully the most stressful) time in my life.
While I no longer pray the Servite Rosary every day, I do find it a great help when things are getting a little stressful, and I want to put my problems in prospective. On the back side of having one child, and currently expecting my second, I am not sure if understand the “Loss of Jesus for Three Days” better, but I will say my meditations on it are different. “Jesus carrying his Cross” still can bring me near to tears as I meditate on the suffering of family and friends who I know are pushing through pain and exhaustion ultimately to their death. Finally I don’t find this morbid because I always remember that it is only through “Jesus being laid in the Tomb” that we can have the resurrection. This give me great hope for all of us.
