Yesterday, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of Jesus, and today, she celebrates Our Lady of Sorrows. The two celebrations are spiritually connected and reveal in concrete terms divine empathy and compassion.
The world is in great need of compassion, and today’s feast offers us a lesson in true and profound compassion. Mary suffers for Jesus, but she also suffers with Him, and Christ’s Passion is a sharing in all human suffering.
Compassion
The liturgy invites us to read, in the Letter to the Hebrews, the sentiments the Lord experienced during His Passion: “In the days of his earthly life, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death.” Jesus’s Passion was imprinted upon His Mother’s heart; those loud cries and tears caused her to suffer. Her desire for Him to be saved from death must have been even stronger than His own, for a mother desires her child’s safety more than the child does himself. Yet, at the same time, Mary united herself with Jesus’s own disposition; like Him, she submitted to the Father’s will.
That is why Mary’s compassion is genuine: she truly took her Son’s suffering upon herself and, together with Him, accepted the Father’s will—an obedience that yields true victory over suffering.
Our own compassion is often superficial; it lacks the fullness of faith found in Mary’s. While we readily recognize God’s will in the suffering of others—and rightly so—sometimes we do not truly suffer with those who are in pain.
Desire and Liberation
Let us ask Our Lady to unite within us these two sentiments that constitute true compassion: the desire for those who suffer to triumph over their pain and be liberated from it, and, at the same time, a profound submission to God’s will—a will that is always one of love.
Did you know that in the Catholic Church, September is traditionally dedicated to the devotion of Our Lady of Sorrows? We are invited to contemplate the seven sorrows of Mary. When life’s pressures seem overwhelming and unbearable, take a recourse to Mary and ask for strength to confront your suffering and sorrows just like the way she did: in perfect union with Christ her Son and in obedient resignation to the Will of God.
The Scriptures record seven moments of sorrow for Mary that speak to her emotional journey alongside Christ from the moment of Christ’s birth to his burial.
1. The Prophecy of Simeon:
· Luke 2:34–35 — Simeon blesses them and tells Mary, “and a sword will pierce your own soul too”.
2. The Flight into Egypt:
· Matthew 2:13–15 — Joseph is told in a dream to take the child and his mother and flee Herod’s wrath.
3. The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple:
· Luke 2:43–45 — The grueling three days where Mary and Joseph walk back to Jerusalem frantically searching for Jesus.
4. Mary Meets Jesus on the Way to Calvary:
· Luke 23:27–31 — The Gospel records a “great number of people” and “women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him” following Jesus on the Way of the Cross. Tradition places Mary prominently along this path.
5. Standing at the Foot of the Cross: · John 19:25–27 — “Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother… When Jesus saw his mother… he said, ‘Woman, here is your son'”.
6. Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross:
· John 19:38–40 / Mark 15:42–46 — Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus lower the body of Christ, placing Him into the waiting arms of His mother.
7. The Burial of Jesus:
· John 19:41–42 / Luke 23:55–56 — The women who had come with Him from Galilee follow and see the tomb where His body is laid.
