Praying with Mary’s Seven Sorrows can help us enter into prayer with her during the month of September
When Karen Palazzola joined the Secular Servites in 2004, she was just looking for a way to grow closer to the Blessed Mother.
She learned about devotion to Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows, a title that honors the suffering she endured in union with her son, Jesus.
“I just like to look at her picture and know that she said yes to things that she didn’t know about, and I can say yes to the future, not knowing what the future is, and be comfortable with it because Jesus is going to walk with me, too,” said Palazzola, now the prioress of the Secular Servites’ Seven Holy Founders local community.
The Order of the Servants of Mary, or Servites, was founded in the early 13th century by seven Italian cloth merchants known as the “Seven Holy Founders.” The order helped popularize devotion to Mary under her title of Our Lady of Sorrows. Other saints, including St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Alphonsus Ligouri, held deep devotion to the Sorrowful Mother.
In “The Glories of Mary,” St. Alphonsus Ligouri wrote: “This great torment, then, which Mary endured for us — a torment which was more than a thousand deaths deserves both our compassion and our gratitude. If we can make no other return for so much love, at least let us give a few moments this day to consider the greatness of the sufferings by which Mary became the Queen of martyrs; for the sufferings of her great martyrdom exceeded those of all the martyrs; being, in the first place, the longest in point of duration; and, in the second place, the greatest in point of intensity.”
The Church dedicates September to Our Lady of Sorrows, whose memorial is celebrated Sept. 15, the day after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Catholics remember Mary’s suffering alongside her son, Jesus, as she mothered Him through childhood and stood by Him as He endured His passion and death for our sins.
Devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows often includes praying with the Seven Sorrows of Mary, also known as the Seven Dolors. The sorrows start with Simeon’s prophecy during the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart and follow the Blessed Mother’s journey through Jesus’ death and burial.
There are several ways to pray with the sorrows of Mary, including a Seven Sorrows Rosary used by the Servites and the Via Matris (Way of the Mother) that offers reflections in a similar style to the Stations of the Cross.
Little Flower Parish in Richmond Heights will host a Via Matris prayer service on Sept. 15, offering parishioners and visitors the chance to become familiar with the devotion as they marked the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows.
The parish hosted the Via Matris devotion for the first time on Holy Saturday this year when a first Saturday prayer group was looking for an alternate devotion to the group’s typical Mass, organizer and parishioner Bopsy Miller said.
“Our Stations (of the Cross) are on the outer perimeter of the church, so we posted pictures of each of the Seven Sorrows on the other wall,” she said. “It was so nice to be walking between Jesus and Mary in these events that are our redemption.”
Since relatively little is said in the Gospels about Mary’s thoughts and feelings, the Via Matris reflections helped Miller pray more deeply with the events from Mary’s perspective, she said.
“It seems that she, of course, was suffering the immediate things that we see, but we know that even the suffering of Jesus physically was only a small part of the suffering He endured,” she said. “She united her sufferings with Christ and therefore was able to care about other souls.”
Drawing close to Mary as our Sorrowful Mother can help us see the grace that can come through our own suffering, Miller said. Miller recalled feeling especially close to Mary during the death of her mother, or any time her own children were in pain.
Our Lady of Sorrows has taught her “the depth of sorrow and that it has its root in love,” she said.
“What makes sorrow so bad is the depth of your love,” she said. “(Mary’s) love was perfect, and to witness what she did with her Son, to experience everything, the rejection, knowing He was God incarnate, to take it in and not be vengeful — she transferred it to mercy. The whole thing helps me understand a little better the mystery of suffering.”
Miller plans to make the Via Matris at Little Flower Parish an annual event to help spread awareness of the devotion and grow closer to the Sorrowful Mother.
“Mary stood with Jesus in the suffering, and I think through her prayers, we can do the same,” she said.
