Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows
Heb 5, 7-9; John 19:25-27
“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother.’”
Today we focus upon the mystery of Mary’s sorrow as playing a part in Christ’s redemption of the world. A question for us is: Are we part of this mystery and if so, how?
I think the “how” is well expressed in something Pope Emeritus Benedict said to the cardinals in his farewell address to them:
The Church is a living body, enlivened by the Holy Spirit. …She is in the world but not of the world: she is of God, of Christ, of the Spirit. … [Quoting Fr. Romano Guardini:] “The Church is reawakened in souls”. The Church is alive, she grows and is reawakened in souls who — like the Virgin Mary — welcome the Word of God and conceive it through the action of the Holy Spirit; they offer to God their own flesh.
Quite simply, you and I share with Mary in being, in our unique lives, the Church. We listen to what God asks of us to undergo or suffer in our lives with her Son. At every Eucharist and in daily living, we say “Yes! I want to do what you, God, will me to do and to be.”
It is in such events of obedient love in daily and not infrequent lives, that we help redeem our world – both the small world of which we are a part and the larger world “out there!”
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Lent, Daily Reflections, Lenten Resources