The days between September 8, the Nativity of Our Lady, and September 15, the feast of Our Lady, Mother of Sorrows, have always been a powerful time of the year for me.
The week that begins with a birthday party for Mary and ends by contemplating her profound sadness shows how those two poles of life coincide in every Christian.
Mary’s joy and sadness has guided me for my entire faith life.
Mary’s sorrows were the beginning of my return to the faith. I heard the first whispers of an invitation to return to the faith as I looked at a crucifix, with Mary at Christ’s feet, on Tepeyac Hill during a summer program in Mexico after my freshman year of college.
Five years later, I readied for my married life by moving alone to Washington, D.C., to search desperately for a job before my wedding. The stress was overwhelming — until I visited the Mother of Sorrows altar at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Her peace in sorrow brought me such consolation that this chapel is still one of my favorite places in the world.
In 2001, I was editor of the National Catholic Register when the September 11 terrorist attacks took place, and in that week between Our Lady’s birthday and the feast of her sorrow, I knew exactly where to turn for solace.
Mary is the prime example that those who suffer well are inspiring and that those who suffer poorly are insufferable.
You’ve probably seen it in people you know (or in yourself!): Facing suffering with acceptance makes people beautiful, generous, and life-giving. Meeting suffering with anger and complaining makes people unattractive, selfish, and draining.
“Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and understanding of others, becomes more human,” Pope Benedict XVI explained. “Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish.”
Great examples of this are St. John Paul II, who lost every member of his family by age 19, and Mother Teresa, who suffered 50 years of spiritual darkness. They easily could have complained about the unfairness of what happened to them, and turned against God. That would have made them unattractive, selfish people who were draining to be around. But they accepted their enormous crosses, and that made them beautiful, generous, and life-giving.
But the greatest example of all is Mary at the foot of the cross.
Sorrow was present in Mary’s life from the very beginning, and joy was with her even at Jesus’ end.
The German poet Ranier Rilke’s Birth of Mary poem begins: “Oh, what it must have cost the angels then not to suddenly break out singing, as though in tears, because they knew: Tonight the mother will be born to the boy!”
Mary’s whole life was marked by her son, even before he came. And that means it was marked by the cross.
We celebrate two things about Mary’s heart: It is the Immaculate Heart, because she was conceived without original sin “by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race,” to be a fitting mother for him. And it is the heart that Simeon promised would be “pierced by a sword.”
But no sword ever pierced Mary’s heart. The heart that was pierced was her son’s heart, which St. Bernard says fulfills the prophecy even more. The two things are related: The sword that pierced her son is what made her immaculate, and her immaculate conception is what made her the first to know the meaning of her son’s death.
Thus, Mary at the foot of the cross is mourning, even though she knows her son will rise for us.
Death is a terrible, confusing, ripping apart of soul and body. A human body with a soul is a someone and a human body without a soul is a some-thing. Mary mourns Jesus because the separation of his soul and body is horrifying and heinous; but she rejoices because the resurrection of her son will make all our deaths only temporary.
I’ve always loved the Stabat Mater hymn, “At the Cross Her Station Keeping” — but I’ve always loved the Easter hymn Regina Caeli (Rejoice, Queen of Heaven!) more.
It’s a great life lesson to realize that the Stabat Mater is 60 lines long and the Regina Caeli is four lines long, but without the Regina Caeli the Stabat Mater would be depressing, and without the Stabat Mater, the Regina Caeli wouldn’t be as sweet.
So celebrating Mary and sorrowing with her go together.
Like shadows show you how bright it is, and winter makes spring exciting, Mary has taught me that tragedy is inevitable, but that for Christians, joy is what truly lasts.
