MEMORIAL: OUR LADY OF SORROWS
(Heb 5:7-9; Ps 31; Lk 2:33-35 or Jn 19:25-27)
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“Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered.”
That striking sentence by St. Paul, becomes even more striking in our day and age when our society has lost any understanding of suffering, and tries to avoid it at all cost.
The readings for this feast today of the Seven Sorrows of Mary invite us to believe in Jesus, and to imitate both Jesus and Mary in their acceptance of redemptive suffering.
Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr often states that there are only two things that can shake us out of our comfort zone and into a deeper level of living life – either great love, or great suffering. There are lessons in life that we will learn only through suffering. Suffering can make us bitter, or better. It is meant to make us better, but for that to happen, we have to be open to it when it comes our way, and not be afraid of it, as are so many people today. The tragic result is an epidemic of opioid addiction as people try to medicate the pain they don’t understand, and physician assisted suicide, as many misguidedly try to prevent the elderly from experiencing what could be the most meaningful period of their lives.
When children win awards at school or in athletic events, that brings honour to the family, but it is the presence of a challenge, such as a Downs Syndrome child, that brings character to a family, as each member sinks deeper roots of faith and grows into deeper expressions of love as sacrifice, caring and commitment.
That is what both Jesus and Mary offer us today – an example of how to accept suffering in our lives, without bitterness or resentment. When we can do that, as they did, we are already living in the kingdom of heaven, because we are just like Jesus and Mary.
The papal preacher, Fr. Cantellamesa claims that imitation of Mary is just as important that devotion to her. We can imitate Mary in many ways. One is to accept some suffering in our lives for the sake of the Gospel, a suffering that is then joined to the suffering of Jesus, and becomes redemptive suffering. In this way, we can share in the seven sorrows of Mary. Traditionally, those seven sorrows are: Simeon’s prophecy in today’s gospel, the flight into Egypt, the disappearance of the boy Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem, the road to Calvary, the crucifixion, the removal from the cross and the entombment of Jesus.
We can imitate Mary in her stance at the foot of the cross, where she was the strong woman, not panicking, but doing what Jesus was doing on the cross, forgiving those who were killing him. Mary is a model of forgiveness.
Mary is also a model of compassion, going to visit her cousin Elizabeth to assist her in her pregnancy, even though she herself was pregnant with Jesus.
Mary is a woman of prayer. We are told that she pondered all these things in her heart, allowing the Holy Spirit to dwell in her and speak to her.
Above all, Mary is a model of faith and trust in God, even when we do not understand what God is doing in our lives. Her Fiat, her yes to God, made it possible for the Incarnation and the whole completion of salvation history to happen.
Wayne Teasdale, in A Monk in the World, states that in a very real sense, Mary was the first priest because she made Jesus present here in this world body, blood, soul and divinity, as the formula goes, through her own body. He bases that conclusion on the fact that a priest, through the celebration of the mass and the words of consecration, makes Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul and divinity. For him, Mary’s acceptance of the invitation to bear the Son of God and his birth through her were the first Eucharistic consecration. That would also make the Visitation the first Eucharistic procession!
On top of his striking statement about Jesus being made perfect through suffering, St. Paul then informs us that Jesus have become the source of salvation for all who obey him. So, it is really only those persons who come to believe in Jesus as Son of God, Word made Flesh, the crucified Messiah, and who obey him, who do his will, who experience salvation, a sharing in eternal life here and now.
The will of Jesus is that we do the will of the Father, as he did, which is to live the Beatitudes, and keep the commandment to love God with our whole being, to love others as we love ourselves, to love others as he has loved us, and in the end, to love our enemies by forgiving them from the heart.
That is made possible only through the power of the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, at work in our lives. It is that same Spirit that empowers us to come to Jesus for forgiveness of all our own sins first of all, and then for healing of all our sinfulness, that which makes us sin – our painful emotions and negative attitudes such as false pride and stubborn self-will.
The Eucharist is our food for that healing journey, as we experience the love of God as forgiveness and healing, empowering us to deepen our faith in Jesus, and imitate both Jesus and Mary in accepting some redemptive suffering in our lives.
