Our Lady of Sorrows
It’s very fitting that the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows follows the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross immediately in the calendar. When I reflect on our Lord’s passion and death, I am always drawn to the love between Christ and our Lady. The fourth station of the cross, for instance, I find to be perhaps the most sorrowful.
When we think of the love which our Lady had for Christ her Son, we cannot really begin to understand. Our notions of love are often corrupted and mixed with selfishness due to sin and imperfection. Even when our souls are infused with divine Charity, we often interfere with the exercise of that gift.
Mary, however, was free from every stain of sin as was Christ her Son. Therefore, she loved him perfectly and realized more than any other creature the great love which Christ was showing for sinners on the cross. The Holy Spirit, who is himself Charity, was given to Mary at the Annuntiation to make her the mother of the Son of God. This Holy Spirit, then, is not only the love between the Father and the Son, but he is now the love between Mary and her Son.
Christ in his divine nature, certainly loves Mary infinitely. In his human nature, of course, he loves perfectly God and every creature. In his human nature, however, perhaps there is the perfection of the special love of a son for his mother. In this way, Christ–who created motherhood and created his own mother–loves Mary more than any son could ever love his mother, and Mary loves God more than any other creature ever could and in a way that no one else could–as God’s own mother.
I often wonder whether Christ suffered more at the torment he endured or at seeing his mother suffering at the foot of his cross.
tui Nati vulnerati
tam dignati pro me pati
poenas mecum divide
Share with me the pains
of your wounded Son
who so deigned to suffer for me