Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows
Mary’s Painful motherhood
Saint John Paul II in 1979 said: "If Mary cries, it means that she has reasons to do so!" When the Holy Father visited the Sanctuary of the Weeping Madonna in Syracuse in 1994, he said: “The mother cries when her children are threatened by evil, spiritual or physical. Mary's tears are always a participation in Christ's weeping over Jerusalem”.
This crying also means that she participates in our birth into God's life and this implies her participation in the passion of Christ. Salvation happened with death on the cross. Mary is experiencing labor pains; it is a painful childbirth because it must pay for us, like Christ, paid the price for our birth in God, so that we may be freed from all the burden of evil. Well, our Lord redeemed us by accepting the punishment we should have suffered. Thus, he freed us from sin.
Mary participates in this mystery of redemption. At the foot of the cross, she experiences her motherhood for the children who are all of us. Jesus says to her: "Woman, behold your son". This word "woman" is meant to mean a spouse and is very important. The son does not normally address the mother by calling her "woman"; in ancient language, this word means lady and lady is a spouse. Jesus addresses Mary with this word twice and in both cases this word is found in the Gospel of John, where it is said about God's covenant with man, about this covenant which the prophets: Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Deutero-Isaiah announced and sang in terms of marriage relationship.
This union is made between Christ, God Incarnate, and the one who embodies the Church as spouse, the one who is most closely associated with the whole work of Christ; that person is Mary. The Virgin Mary is the Mother of Christ, but she is also a spouse of God. This is how the fourth Gospel presents her. The Gospel knows her as Mother because in the fourth chapter it says, "Jesus and his mother were there," but the words Jesus addresses her, taken literally, could be an insult to Mary. They give the impression that the Son rejects her, does not recognize her. Why is he rejecting her? Because " the hour has not come", it is not yet the time of the relationship. He could not reject her as a Mother. These words refer to the fact that the time has not yet come for that union with God from which the new humanity is to be born. When the new humanity is born, Jesus will once again address Mary with the words with which the man addresses his wife: "Woman". Then, when the union takes place, a new humanity will be born, consisting of the redeemed children: "Here - Jesus will say – this is your son".
Mary's motherhood for us is therefore a painful motherhood because it relates to the passion of her Son. Just as Jesus becomes the Savior of mankind through death, so also Mary becomes Co-redemptrix through this participation in the Passion of the Son. Mary's motherhood is necessarily a motherhood of suffering because she cannot give us, depending on Christ, God's life except in the way Jesus does, taking upon himself the burden of our sin. Therefore, she speaks as if she was still participating in this Passion: "You will never be able to repay me for the suffering I have taken upon myself for you."
Does Our Lady still suffer? Is she still crying? She also cried in Syracuse. Isn't she in paradise now? So how can she cry? As we have said before, the presence of the Christian mystery presupposes the presence of a saving event, and the presence of the saving event in turn is always the presence of death and Resurrection. When it comes to Our Lady, her motherhood makes her a guarantee for us, because she accepts the responsibility of our sins before God. She intercedes for us; that is, she is in some way responsible for us in the face of God's infinite holiness. She bears responsibility for us, experiencing the passion of his Son. She is not experiencing the suffering of the cross now, because it has passed away, but the moment in which Mary joined her Son in his death to share with him in glory did not pass. This passion is, as it were, always present, not because it is in time, but because our time falls into this act, which is a paschal event. It is not Christ who continues to suffer in time; it is not Mary who still in this time, is grieving; we live in time, entering through faith into the present of the salvation event.
Mary's motherhood is a painful motherhood. We are children of Our Lady of Sorrows. Living in time, we enter this mystery of suffering through which we were born to God and, reborn to grace, which we received, and with the forgiveness of sins, we got the dignity of her children and children of God. As with every woman in physical motherhood, also in Mary's spiritual motherhood, we are children of Christ's passion, children of Mary's pain. Precisely because we cost her so much suffering, her love became true love.
Precisely because we have cost so dearly, we are so precious to her. Our price is the blood of her Son, and Her tears. No mother has ever suffered for her children as much as she has suffered for us. But that should make us happy, not regretful, because the pain is gone and we feel how real this love is, real, concrete; precisely because we cost her so much, that's why she loves us even more. When you don't suffer for someone that you love, love is never great enough to be trusted
There is nothing in the created world more valuable than man. Unfortunately, we often feel unnecessary, we feel that we are someone of little importance, to the point where we despise ourselves; but that's not true! On the contrary, the entire universe is not worth more than one soul. We should realize how valuable we are; we are costing the price of the love with which we are loved. And God so loved us that He died for us; Mary loved us so much that she lived her painful passion for us at the foot of the cross. For all of us together and for each one of us, because all of humanity is not worth more than each individual person. Each "I", John Paul II tells us, is one-of-a-kind and unrepeatable, has no plural. I was loved by God as if I were alone in the face of His love; I was loved by Mary as if I were her only child. All the blood of Christ was shed for me; all the tears of the Mother of God were cried out for me. Mary, Mother of Sorrows, pray for me.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george