“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). With this teaching from the sermon on the mount, Jesus gives us encouragement to mourn. That same encouragement is echoed and amplified in today’s feast, the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. This feast has been celebrated for several centuries. It gained special prominence in response to the iconoclasm of the 15th Century. At that time, in response to the efforts of the iconoclasts who were stripping away religious imagery from the spiritual life, the Church gave even greater prominence to the images of Mary’s suffering. By contemplating the sorrows of Mary, the faithful learn how to mourn as she mourned, opening themselves up to her son’s promise to those who mourn: “They shall be comforted.”
Admit it: many of us have a tendency to mourn for the wrong things, and even when we mourn for the right things, we mourn too much or too little. We still have to learn how to mourn correctly. Today is a day for Christians to go to “mourning school.” Let us reflect on each of these seven traumas that Mary went through, praying, as we go, a Hail Mary or two.
A more involved version of this historic practice is available here.