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The following points were attempted in the homily:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n- Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. We focused on the Lord\u2019s victory. Unlike on Good Friday when we ponder his sufferings upon the Cross, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross not only celebrates the rediscovery of the Cross after it was stolen in the early Church but the rediscovery, in a sense, of the meaning of Jesus\u2019 triumph on the\u00a0Cross as something in which we should glory rather than be ashamed.<\/li>\n
- Today, the day after celebrating Jesus\u2019 victory on the Cross, however, we ponder his mother weeping and sorrowful. It\u2019s a bit of a jarring juxtaposition, one that ought to get us to ask why we would contemplate her in this way. (Starting from 1423 in Germany, there was a commemoration of Mary’s sufferings and sorrows on the Friday after the third Sunday of Easter. In 1600, the feast became popular in France and was set to be celebrated the Friday of Passiontide before Palm Sunday. Pope Benedict XIII extended it to the universal Church in 1727. In 1668, however, a separate feast of the Seven Sorrows of Mary was established, at the request of the Servites for the Third Sunday of September. In 1814, Pope Pius VII extended it to the universal Church and in 1913, Pope St. Pius X fixed it on September 15, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross.) The fundamental reason why we ponder Mary\u2019s sorrows the day after the Exaltation is because her tears are not over her Son\u2019s victory but over so many of us who have not yet entered into his victory. It\u2019s not over what her Divine offspring accomplished on Calvary, but how many of us allow his gifts to go in vain, how many of us fail to make up in our flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church (Col 1:24).<\/li>\n
- The Church has long pondered the suffering and joys of the Blessed Virgin Mary as she accompanied her Son and shared in his redeeming work. There has for centuries\u00a0been devotion to her \u201cSeven Sorrows\u201d: The prophecy of Simeon, when he announced not only that Jesus would be a sign of contradiction pointing to the ruin and resurrection of many but that her own heart would be pierced with a sword; the flight into Egypt after Herod\u2019s henchmen were trying to assassinate her and God\u2019s little boy; the loss of Jesus for three days at the age of 12; meeting Jesus on the Way to Calvary; seeing Jesus suffer and die on the Cross; receiving Jesus\u2019 body into her arms at the foot of the Cross; and placing Jesus\u2019 body in the tomb.<\/li>\n
- Today is a day on which we ponder what it must have felt like to have her heart and soul pierced in these ways. Just as the Letter to the Hebrews today has us focus on Jesus’ “prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears” that were heard because of “his reverence” and his perfection in obedience, so today we acknowledge Mary’s role as a co-redeemer through her prayers, supplications, loud cries, tears, reverence and obedient fiat.\u00a0As we prayed in the Stabat Mater<\/em> Sequence before the Gospel, \u201cIs there one who would not weep, \u2018whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ\u2019s dear Mother to behold?\u201d But our meditation is not supposed to stop there. By God\u2019s grace it\u2019s meant to lead us to compassion, to suffering with Mary. We pray in that Sequence words we should take seriously:\u00a0<\/em>\u201cO sweet Mother! font of love, touch my spirit from above, make my heart with yours accord.\u00a0Make me feel as you have felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ, my Lord.\u00a0Holy Mother, pierce me through, in my heart each wound renew of my Savior crucified.\u00a0Let me share with you his pain, who for all our sins was slain, who for me in torments died.\u00a0Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning him who mourned for me, all the days that I may live.\u00a0By the cross with you to stay, there with you to weep and pray,\u00a0is\u00a0all I ask of you to give<\/em>.\u00a0Virgin of all virgins blest!\u00a0Listen to my fond request:\u00a0let me share your grief divine<\/em>.<\/strong>\u00a0Let me to my latest breath, in my body bear the death of that dying Son of yours.\u201d Today we ask her for the grace to share her grief divine, to join our tears to hers, to bear in our body the death of Jesus so that we might in turn share his life.<\/li>\n
- But Mary\u2019s heart is pierced not only by the sufferings of her divine Son Jesus, but also all her spiritual sons and daughters given to her in the third Annunciation carried out by her Son hanging upon the Cross, when he, seeing Mary and his beloved disciple, St. John, at the foot of the Cross said, respectively, \u201cWoman, behold your son\u201d and \u201cBehold your mother.\u201d And like any Mother, this \u201cHoly Mother\u201d mourns and weeps and suffers whenever she sees any of her children suffer. A couple of weeks ago we pondered the example of St. Monica who wept for 32 years for the conversion of her husband, mother-in-law and son, St. Augustine. If she wept that much, how much more will the sinless Virgin Mary weep for the conversion of all God\u2019s prodigal sons and daughters? How much will she weep for us when we choose against her Son? How much will she weep for those who don\u2019t know him and his love or wander far from him, lost in life?<\/li>\n
- On Sunday, Sept. 19, we will mark the 175th anniversary of the appearances of Our Lady of LaSalette, where Mary appeared to two young children in the French alps in 1846.\u00a0As they were grazing their sheep,\u00a0two shepherd children \u2014 Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud \u2014 found her sobbing. We all need to ponder that image of Mary bawling\u00a0her eyes out with her face in her hands. It\u2019s tempting to think of the Blessed Mother exclusively in the beautiful images of Murillo, crowned with stars, stomping on the serpent, with the moon under her feet. But it\u2019s key to grasp her tears, because without them, we won\u2019t grasp her love, and we may not be opening ourselves fully to receive that love.\u00a0Her tears initially frightened the 14-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy, but she told them not to be afraid, to come close, because she wanted to announce to them great news. That was the great news of conversion. They had built a little shrine called \u201cParadise\u201d and that\u2019s where Mary first appeared, to show them that not everyone was on the way to Paradise. She lamented four practices that are still very common today: blaspheming the name of God; missing Sunday Mass; failing to pray, and not even taking the conversion of Lent seriously. She was calling them, and through them all of us, to do the opposite: to use\u00a0our thoughts and speech to praise God; to prioritize the great gift of her Son in the Eucharist; to become people who pray; and to repent and believe in the Gospel and live a repentant life.\u00a0She wore a radiant crucifix that had two symbols on it, one a hammer and another a pair of pincers, which was a sign of the freedom that everyone has, the freedom to refuse God and hammer Jesus to the Cross by sin, or the freedom to love God and take the pincers to remove the nails. That is the choice that faces every Christian. She weeps when we chose the nail, not just because of what that means for Jesus her Son but what that means for each of us with the hammer in our hand. She also wants us to share that grief divine, to learn how to mourn for others and their sins so that we may like her be blessed and consoled, as her Son promised in the Beatitudes.<\/li>\n
- But as we ponder Mary\u2019s \u201cgrief divine,\u201d we recognize that, as St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, we Christians grieve differently than the rest because we grieve with hope. And no one has more hope that the one we call\u00a0Mater Spei.<\/em>\u00a0Her tears are those of sorrow but also of joy, having seen so many conversions of her sons and daughters. Her sorrows are joined in hope to a perpetual Magnificat in which she praises the Lord who has mercy from generation to generation, who is mindful of that mercy that he showed to Abraham and all our fathers in the faith.<\/li>\n
- Today Mary gathers us all here around the altar, around the body and blood of her Son offered on Calvary, praying that we may receive more and more and live by the fruits of this sacrifice. She wants to make our heart burn like hers. Her tears have irrigated the soil of our soils precisely to receive this gift and she\u2019d like to intercede for us to have a similar gift of tears as we approach a situation in the world in which so many of her spiritual sons and daughters treat each other as Cain did Abel, and then be motivated as she to intervene with love. As we pray on her feast day, we ask her to intercede for us to obtain the grace that we may console her today and console her Son by living the unity and love he seeks to bring about by what we won for us from the Cross and what he left us in this everlasting sacrifice. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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