The Feast of our Lady of Sorrows, Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Luke 2:33-35

Jesus’ father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the downfall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

The commemoration of the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary became a subject of meditation, prayer, and preaching during the Middle Ages as a consequence of the renewed devotion to the sufferings of the Lord, especially fostered by the Franciscans.  An example of this devotion to Mary is the hymn Stabat Mater, now often sung during the observance of the Stations of the Cross.  We first see this feast honoring her sorrows celebrated in the 1400’s in Germany, and it became a universal feast in the 1600’s.  By this time, popular devotion recognized seven particular sorrows: the prophecy of Simeon; the flight into Egypt; the loss of the Child Jesus in the temple; the meeting of Jesus and Mary on the Way of the Cross; the Crucifixion; the taking down of the Body of Jesus from the Cross; and the burial of Jesus.

What came to be known as the first of her sorrows is recounted in the Gospel reading for the feast.  Following the harrowing journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem (the Virgin, heavily pregnant, is often pictured as riding on a donkey on this occasion, but most likely that is not true), the giving birth in the stable, the visit of the Magi, and the Infant’s circumcision and naming, Joseph and Mary took their Baby the short distance to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to God, as per the law regarding the first-born male.  They would have stood in line with dozens of other couples with their new-borns, with nothing to distinguish them.  At the point when it is their turn in the temple, the elderly Simeon approached them and took the Child in his own arms to announce that “this Child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted.”  The Greek text may be more literally translated as, This One is appointed for a sign [to be] spoken against.  The literal translation helps us to see that Jesus was not merely “destined”, as though by disinterested fate, but was “appointed” by a Superior to a station or position.  The Child was in fact appointed as a “Sign”, against whom people would speak, presumably those whose “downfall” was signified by his Nativity.  The Evangelists all use the Greek word we translate as “sign” to mean an event or an appearance that provides confirmation of a claim, or as an indication of supernatural power.  For instance, in Luke 11:16: “And others tempting, asked of him a sign from heaven.”  The Pharisees press Jesus to give them some physical proof of his divinity somehow greater than that which he had already shown them.  Or, in Luke 21, 7, when Jesus speaks to his disciples about the end of time: “Master, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign when they shall begin to come to pass?”  Jesus then warns them of “signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars” (v. 25).  

All this, the Virgin Mary heard and pondered.  And then Simeon told her that she would play her own part in the Lord’s “contradiction”, his Passion: “And you yourself a sword will pierce”.  The Greek helps us out again: And a sword will pass through your soul.  Now, the word translated as “sword” can also mean a “piercing sorrow”.  This “passes through” the Virgin’s psyche, which can mean “soul”, or, literally, “breath”, which takes us back to Genesis 2, 7: “The Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath [psyche] of life, and man became a living soul.”  That is to say, A piercing, mortally wounding sorrow will pass through your very being.  Her sorrow will be utterly unlike any sorrow any person has ever felt.  But this agony will have a purpose: “So that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”  In the Greek, the “thoughts” may be either good or bad.  The intimate connection of which Simeon speaks between Jesus, appointed as a Sign, and her suffering points to the fact that Mary did not suffer only on account of Jesus, but also with Jesus — tied to her Son in a way no other ever could be, through the purity of her faith in him as the Son of God.  And Jesus knew exactly how much she herself sacrificed on account of him and with him as he gazed down at her from the Cross and committed her to St. John’s care.  The thoughts of many hearts are “revealed” through Christ’s Passion and her suffering within it: those of the Apostles, those of the Sanhedrin, those of Pilate, of Judas, and the hearts of those alive today, for the Passion of Jesus reveals the extent of God’s love for man, and the story of the human race since that time is the story of how mortal men and women accept or reject it.

By living holy, penitential lives, we too may stand by Mary at the Cross of Jesus, looking up into the eyes through which infinite love cascades out to us, and prepare ourselves for our own resurrection.