Our Lady of Sorrows

One day after the Cross is exalted, the Church remembers the woman who stood beside it. John’s Gospel is unadorned: standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. Jesus sees his mother and the disciple he loved and gives them to each other. From that hour the disciple takes her into his home. The memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows is the Church refusing to exalt the Cross and forget the person who remained there when the others had scattered.

Simeon’s word at the Presentation is the other text. A sword will pierce your own soul, he tells Mary, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. The feast of February 2 and the memorial of September 15 are the same sentence heard at the beginning and at the end. Medieval devotion gathered Mary’s sufferings into the seven sorrows: the prophecy of Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of the child in the Temple, the meeting on the way of the Cross, the crucifixion, the descent from the Cross, and the burial. The number seven is a catechism, not a new revelation. Two of the seven are in the infancy narratives. The rest are the Passion. The Stabat Mater, the sequence long sung beside this memorial, walks the same path: the mother stood weeping.

The memorial’s modern place on September 15 was fixed so that it would never be separated from the feast of the Cross. An older commemoration of the seven sorrows was kept in Passiontide. The Servite order, founded in the thirteenth century, spread the devotion. In 1814, as he returned from Napoleonic captivity, Pius VII extended the feast in thanksgiving. None of that history replaces John 19. Mary’s sorrow is not a parallel redemption. Catholic teaching is careful here, and the liturgy is careful. Christ alone redeems. Mary’s compassion is real, creaturely, and unique, because she is his mother and because she consented. She does not add a second sacrifice equal to his. She stands inside his.

September 15 is a memorial, in white, unless a higher day intervenes. The Gloria is not said merely because the subject is grave or glorious. The sequence Stabat Mater may be sung. In the current Missal it is optional, not a required part of every parish Mass. The Gospel is John 19:25–27 or Luke 2:33–35. Either one is enough. A parish that tries to preach all seven sorrows and never reads the Gospel has inverted the day.

The collect asks that we who honor the sorrows of the Mother of God may obtain the happy effects of the Passion. The entrance and communion antiphons return to Simeon’s sword and to the woman standing by the cross. Vestments remain white, the color of Mary’s feasts, not the red of the previous day and not the violet of Good Friday. The day is a memorial of the Virgin beside a feast of the Lord, and the colors tell the difference.