How to Pray the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Mother

Today is the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Here is a fitting devotion for today. The Rosary of the Seven Sorrows, or the Servite Rosary, is a prayer that originated with the Servite Order. It is often said in connection with the Seven Sorrows of Mary.

The Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows reminds us that Mary plays a key role in our Redemption and that she suffered along with her Son Jesus to save us. It is prayed using a special rosary comprised of seven "decades" containing seven beads each.

Here is how the Rosary of Seven Sorrows is prayed:

Each group of seven is begun with an Our Father, as in the regular Rosary. Some people start with an Act of Contrition since the devotion has a penitential aspect. Also ,like the regular Rosary, the groups of seven Hail Marys are an occasion for meditation on "Mysteries" — in this case, the Seven Sorrows of Mary, listed below:

The First Sorrow

The Prophecy of Simeon
Reading: Luke 2:25-35.

When Mary and Joseph present the infant Jesus in the temple, Simeon predicts that a "sword" (of sorrow) will pierce Mary's soul.

The Second Sorrow

The flight into Egypt
Reading: Matthew 2:13-15.

When King Herod orders the death of all male children age two or younger, Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt with the infant Jesus. 

The Third Sorrow

The Child Jesus Lost in the Temple
Reading: Luke 2: 41-50.

Mary and Joseph search for the child Jesus for three days, finding Him at last — after agonizing sorrow — in the temple.

The Fourth Sorrow

Mary meets Jesus carrying the cross
Reading: Luke 23: 27-29.

As Jesus makes His way to Calvary, condemned to crucifixion, He meets His mother, Mary. He is bruised, derided, cursed and defiled and her sorrow is absolute as Jesus drags His own cross up the hill of His crucifixion.

The Fifth Sorrow

Mary at the foot of the cross
Reading: John 19: 25-30.

Mary stands near her dying Son unable to minister to him as He cries "I thirst." She hears Him promise heaven to a thief and forgive His enemies. His last words, "Behold your mother," charge us to look on Mary as our mother.

The Sixth Sorrow

Mary receives the body of Jesus
Reading: Psalm 130.

Jesus is taken down from the cross and His body is placed in Mary's arms. The passion and death are over, but for His mother, grief continues. She holds His body in her arms.

The Seventh Sorrow

Mary witnesses the burial of Jesus
Reading: Luke 23: 50-56.

The body of Jesus is laid in the tomb. The most tragic day in history ends, Mary alone in sorrow, awaiting the Resurrection.

“I Have Not Moved” ~ Bishop Strickland on Vatican II & Lefebvre

"A shepherd must walk into the wreckage and determine what went wrong, where it went wrong, how it went wrong, and what must now be repaired." 

From One Peter Five

By His Lordship Joseph Strickland, Bishop Emeritus of Tyler, TX

"We must determine where the rupture actually occurred."

Editor’s note: His Excellency’s Vatican II Reading Challenge can be found at his website here. The following pastoral letter was originally published on September 12th at his website here.

“GO AND REPAIR MY HOUSE, WHICH, AS YOU SEE, IS FALLING INTO RUIN”

Dear Sons and Daughters in Christ,

I know that some of you believe I have changed. Some fear that I have crossed over to “the other side.” Some wonder whether, after years of speaking plainly and courageously about the crisis in the Church, defending the traditional Roman liturgy, questioning what was done in the name of the Second Vatican Council, and speaking openly about Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, I am now retreating from those convictions. Some of you may even feel betrayed. So before I say anything else, I want to say this plainly: I have not moved.

The words Christ spoke to St. Francis at San Damiano – “Go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling into ruin” – have weighed heavily upon my heart.

I have not forgotten what happened to the Church. I have not forgotten what happened to the sacred liturgy, to Catholic catechesis, to religious life, to priestly formation, or to the transmission of the Faith. I have not forgotten the altars that were removed, the sanctuaries that were stripped, the Latin that disappeared, the sacred traditions that were discarded, or the generations of Catholics who were taught to regard much of their own inheritance as something from which the Church needed to be liberated.

I have not ceased to defend the traditional Roman liturgy. I have not ceased to believe that much was unnecessarily abandoned and must be restored. I have not ceased to believe that Sacred Scripture must be read within Sacred Tradition and according to the perennial Faith of the Church. I have not ceased to believe that no pope, council, bishop, priest, theologian, or generation possesses the authority to create a new Catholic Faith.

And I have not ceased to believe that serious questions remain concerning the Second Vatican Council and the enormous upheaval that followed it.

I have not become less willing to speak the truth. I am trying to speak it more precisely.

For many years, Catholics have often been presented with two explanations of the crisis. One says, “Vatican II caused all of this.” The other says, “There was nothing wrong with Vatican II; the problem was only its implementation.” I no longer believe that either answer, standing alone, is sufficient.

Something happened. Something happened to Catholic worship. Something happened to Catholic identity. Something happened to catechesis. Something happened to religious life and the priesthood. Something happened to the way Catholics understood Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, authority, evangelization, and even the Church herself. We cannot seriously deny this.

But after more than sixty years, it is no longer enough simply to point to the devastation and say, “There was a rupture.” We must determine where the rupture actually occurred.

Was it in the Council itself? Was it in particular passages of particular documents? Was it in ambiguities that opened the door to interpretations contrary to what the Church had previously taught? Was it in the commissions and reforms that followed? Was it in their implementation? Was it an ideology that appealed to the “spirit of Vatican II” even when the actual words of the Council said something different? Or did rupture occur at different levels, in different ways, and in different moments?

These questions are not a retreat from what I have said before. They are the necessary next step.

There is a time when courage requires a bishop to stand before a crisis and say, “Something has gone terribly wrong.” But eventually courage requires something more. A shepherd must walk into the wreckage and determine what went wrong, where it went wrong, how it went wrong, and what must now be repaired. That is what I am trying to do.

For too long, almost everything that happened to the Church after the Council has been placed into one box labeled “Vatican II.” I want to open the box. I want to know what the Council actually said. I want to know what it did not say. I want to know what happened afterward. I want to know what was done in its name. And I want to know where something departed from what the Church had received.

Pope Benedict XVI understood that the interpretation of Vatican II stood near the heart of the problem. In his address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, he contrasted what he called a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” with a “hermeneutic of reform,” of renewal within the continuity of the one Church given to us by Christ. That distinction is essential.

There was not one Catholic Church before the Council and another Catholic Church afterward. The Church did not begin again in 1962. Vatican II possessed no authority to invent a new Catholic Faith. No council possesses such authority.

Every council must stand within the Faith that preceded it: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, the Fathers and Doctors, the previous councils, and the perennial Magisterium.

Benedict made this particularly clear during his efforts to heal the rupture involving the
Society of St. Pius X. He would not accept the idea that the teaching authority of the Church could simply be frozen at 1962. But neither would he allow Vatican II to be severed from everything that came before it. The roots cannot be cut away from the tree. That is an important principle for the work before us.

But I want to add something equally important: Continuity cannot merely be asserted. It must be demonstrated.

My principle is simple. If there is continuity, let us demonstrate it. If there is ambiguity, let us identify it. If there is rupture, let us locate it.

And if something truly cannot stand because it cannot be reconciled with the Faith the Church has received, then the Church must eventually have the courage to address it.

This brings me to a man whose name cannot easily be separated from this history: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. I have spoken favorably of Archbishop Lefebvre before. I do not withdraw those words. I believe history will judge this man and his role in the crisis of the Church very differently from the way he has often been judged.

Indeed, I have said that I believe it possible that the Church will one day recognize his sanctity. That judgment belongs to the Church, not to me. But I am permitted to recognize what I believe were extraordinary virtues in a bishop confronting circumstances few bishops in history have been required to face.

We should be cautious about sitting comfortably decades later and imaging that we can easily judge the conscience of a man standing in the middle of an ecclesial earthquake. Archbishop Lefebvre believed that something precious was in danger of being lost. He believed the Catholic priesthood was in danger. He believed the traditional Roman liturgy was in danger. He believed the transmission of the Faith was in danger. And he acted according to what he believed before God was his responsibility as a bishop.

Whatever judgment one makes concerning particular decisions he made, it is difficult to imagine the history of the traditional Roman liturgy during the last half-century without acknowledging the enormous role Archbishop Lefebvre and those associated with him played in preserving it.

There are moments when Providence raises a man to preserve something while almost everyone around him seems prepared to abandon it. Perhaps that was Archbishop Lefebvre’s particular calling. I am grateful that what might have been lost was preserved. But gratitude for another man’s vocation does not require me to believe that God has given me precisely the same one. His calling need not be my calling.

Perhaps Archbishop Lefebvre was called, in a moment of tremendous upheaval, to hold fast to a shore that seemed to be disappearing. Perhaps my responsibility in this hour is to help build a bridge from that shore. But let me say this – the bridge is not a compromise.

Let me be very clear about what I mean. I am not building a bridge between truth and error. There can be no compromise between Catholic truth and falsehood. I am not searching for a comfortable middle position between Tradition and modernism. I am not asking traditional Catholics to surrender what was handed down so that everyone can simply get along. That would not be unity.

The bridge I speak of is across something else: the wounds, suspicions, accusations, misunderstandings, and divisions that have separated Catholics for more than half a century.

On one shore are Catholics who watched much of their inheritance disappear and learned, often through painful experience, to distrust anyone who spoke favorably of Vatican II. On another are Catholics who were taught that fidelity to Vatican II required them to view much of what preceded it with suspicion. Both have inherited wounds. Both have inherited assumptions. And both need the truth.

The bridge cannot be built by pretending that nothing happened. It can only be built by discovering what actually happened. And that bridge must have a foundation. Its foundation must be Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Its pillars must be the perennial teaching of the Church. Its destination must be Jesus Christ.

If something cannot stand upon that foundation, then it cannot be carried across simply for the sake of reconciliation.

Some of you may be thinking: Reading Dei Verbum is one thing. Reading Sacrosanctum Concilium is one thing. But what will happen when we reach the difficult documents of Vatican II? That is a fair question. My answer is simple: We will read them too.

I am well aware that there are documents of the Council that present considerably more difficult questions concerning their relationship to previous Catholic teaching. We will not avoid them.

We will place them beside Sacred Scripture. We will place them beside Sacred Tradition. We will place them beside the Fathers and Doctors. We will place them beside the previous Magisterium.

And we will ask: Can this stand within the Faith the Church has always received?

If the answer is yes, we should say yes. If clarification is necessary, we should say so. If an apparent contradiction can be resolved by understanding a text correctly within Tradition, then let us demonstrate that. But if something cannot be reconciled, then we must not manufacture an artificial continuity simply because acknowledging the problem would be difficult.

We are not examining Tradition in the light of Vatican II. We are examining Vatican II in the light of Tradition. That makes all the difference.

None of us serving the Church today created the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s. We did not write the conciliar documents. We did not oversee their implementation. We did not create the reforms that followed. We did not make many of the decisions whose consequences the Church still lives with today.

But a bishop cannot simply say: “I was not there.” I am here now. The Church I inherited is the Church I am responsible to shepherd.

A father who discovers serious damage to the family home does not say, “I did not cause it,” and walk away. His children live there. He must examine the foundation. He must discover which stones were removed. He must determine what was altered unnecessarily. He must identify anything introduced that does not belong. He must preserve what remains sound. He must restore what was lost. And he must repair what was broken. That is how I understand episcopal responsibility in this hour.

I did not create these wounds. But I am a bishop in the Church that bears them. Therefore, in some measure, they are now my responsibility. The bishops of today cannot indefinitely pass these questions to the bishops of tomorrow. At some point, someone must begin.

And to those of you who fear I have betrayed you, I know why you are cautious. Many of you suffered simply because you wanted what generations of Catholics before you had received without controversy. Some were mocked. Some were marginalized. Some were treated as disobedient because they loved the ancient liturgy. Some watched their children lose the Faith while being assured that the Church was experiencing a new springtime.

I will not ask you to pretend those things did not happen. I will not ask you to surrender Tradition in order to cross this bridge. I ask you instead: Bring Tradition with you. Bring Sacred Scripture. Bring the Fathers. Bring the Doctors. Bring the councils. Bring the encyclicals. Bring the catechisms. Bring St. Thomas. Bring the traditional Roman liturgy. Bring everything the Church handed down. We will need all of it.

And then let us examine what happened. If Vatican II stands with what came before it, we should have no fear of acknowledging that. If something done afterward contradicts what came before it, we should have no fear of acknowledging that either. And if we encounter something in the Council itself that cannot be reconciled with what came before it, we must not hide from that.

Truth has nothing to fear from examination.

And to those who defend the Council, I ask something of you as well. Do not treat serious questions as acts of disobedience. Do not answer evidence with slogans. Do not ask traditional Catholics to deny what they witnessed. Do not invoke Vatican II to justify something unless Vatican II actually said it.

If something precious was unnecessarily discarded, help restore it. If a reform exceeded what the Council called for, acknowledge it. If a conciliar formulation requires clarification in light of previous Catholic teaching, do not be afraid of that either.

And do not suppose that love for the Church requires us to pretend that the last sixty years have not revealed profound problems. The Church is not protected by our refusal to examine her wounds. The Church is protected by Jesus Christ.

Perhaps this is where Archbishop Lefebvre’s work and my own calling meet. Perhaps Providence required someone in an earlier generation to say: “I will not let this disappear.”

Perhaps Pope Benedict XVI was called to remind the Church that the answer could not lie in rupture, but in genuine reform within the continuity of the one Church. And perhaps those of  us who serve as bishops now have inherited another part of that work.

Perhaps our responsibility is to go back. To examine. To distinguish. To recover. To correct. To restore. And to rebuild.

One generation may preserve the stones. Another may be called to rebuild the house. One generation may hold the shore. Another may be called to build the bridge. Those callings do not have to be enemies. One may depend upon the other.

You cannot restore what no one preserved. And you cannot build a bridge from a shore that has disappeared.

I honor those who held the shore. I honor those who suffered to preserve what had been handed down. I honor those who warned when warning was unpopular. But perhaps the hour has now come also to build.

And so I return to where I began. I have not moved.

I have not moved from Sacred Scripture. I have not moved from Sacred Tradition. I have not moved from the perennial Magisterium. I have not moved from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I have not moved from the Faith handed down from the Apostles. I have not moved from my conviction that the Church has suffered a profound crisis and that much of what was unnecessarily lost must be restored.

And I have not moved from my responsibility as a bishop to speak the truth clearly and courageously, whatever the cost.

But standing firm does not mean that the work is finished. There are questions that must be answered. There are wounds that must be healed. There are errors that must be corrected. There are treasures that must be recovered. There is a house that must be rebuilt. And there is a bridge that someone must be willing to walk upon.

I intend to walk onto that bridge. Not because I am uncertain about where I stand. Precisely because I know where I stand.

I will walk onto it carrying the Faith the Church has handed down. I will not surrender Catholic truth in order to make the bridge easier to cross. I will not manufacture continuity where continuity cannot be demonstrated. I will not defend what cannot stand merely because someone has attached the name of Vatican II to it. I will seek the truth wherever it leads.

And I will do so as a bishop who knows that one day I must stand before Jesus Christ and give an account for what was entrusted to me. That judgment matters more than the approval of either side.

So I ask you: Walk with me. Not toward a new Church. Not toward a compromised Church. Not toward a Church invented in the 1960’s. And not toward an imagined Church that can simply erase sixty years of history as though they never happened.

Walk with me toward the fullness of the Catholic Faith we have received. Let us preserve what is true. Let us recover what was lost. Let us identify what went wrong. Let us correct what cannot stand. Let us heal what has been wounded. And let us rebuild what has been broken.

Not with anger. Not with fear. Not as opposing camps. But as Catholics who love the Church enough to seek the truth about what happened to her.

The Church does not belong to us. She belongs to Jesus Christ. He has not abandoned her. And neither will we.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, keep us faithful to her Divine Son. May Saints Peter and Paul strengthen us in the apostolic Faith. May St. Joseph, Protector of Holy Church, guard us in the work that lies ahead.

And may Almighty God grant us the wisdom to recognize the truth, the courage to defend it, the humility to correct what must be corrected, and the charity to rebuild together what has been wounded.

I have not moved.

But from the first ground of Sacred Tradition, I believe the time has come to begin the work of rebuilding.

Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today's Holy Mass from SSPX Australia. You may follow the Mass at Divinum Officium.

Feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary ~ Dom Prosper Guéranger

Feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary

From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:

O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow! (Lamentations 1:12) Is this, then, the first cry of that sweet babe whose coming brought such pure joy to our earth? Is the standard of suffering to be so soon unfurled over the cradle of such lovely innocence? Yet the heart of mother Church has not deceived her; this feast, coming at such a time, is ever the answer to that question of the expectant human race: What shall this child be?

The Savior to come is not only the reason of Mary’s existence, he is also her exemplar in all things. It is as his Mother that the Blessed Virgin came, and therefore as the Mother of Sorrows; for the God, whose future birth was the very cause of her own birth, is to be in this world a Man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity. (Isaiah 53:3) o whom shall I compare thee? sings the prophet of lamentations: O Virgin … great as the sea is thy destruction. (Lamentations 2:13) On the mountain of the Sacrifice, as mother she gave her Son, as Bride she offered herself together with him; by her sufferings both as Bride and as Mother, she was the co-redemptress of the human race. This teaching and these recollections were deeply engraved on our hearts on that other feast of our Lady’s dolours which immediately preceded Holy Week.

Christ dieth now no more: and Our Lady’s sufferings are over. Nevertheless the Passion of Christ is continued in his elect, in his Church, against which hell vents the rage it cannot exercise against himself. To this Passion of Christ’s mystical Body of which she is also a Mother, Mary still contributes her compassion; how often have her venerated images attested the fact, by miraculously shedding tears! This explains the Church’s departure from liturgical custom by celebrating two feasts, in different seasons, under one title.

On perusing the register of the apostolic decrees concerning sacred rites, the reader is astonished to find a long and unusual interruption lasting from March 20th, 1809, to September 17th, 1814, at which latter date is entered the decree instituting on this present Sunday a second Commemoration of Our Lady’s Dolours. (Gardellini, Decreta auuthentica Congr. Sacr. Rit.)

1809-1814, five sorrowful years, during which the government of Christendom was suspended; years of blood which beheld the Man-God agonizing once more in the person of his captive Vicar. But the Mother of Sorrows was still standing beneath the Cross, offering to God the Church’s sufferings; and when the trial was over, Pius VII, knowing well whence the mercy had come, dedicated this day to Mary as a fresh memorial of the day of Calvary.

Even in the seventeenth century, the Servites had the privilege of possessing this second feast, which they celebrated as a double of the 2nd Class, with a Vigil and an Octave. It is from them that the Church has borrowed the Office and Mass. This honor and privilege was due to the Order established by Our Lady to honor her sufferings and to spread devotion to them. Philip Benizi, heir to the seven holy Founders, propagated the flame kindled by them on the heights of Monte Senario; thanks to the zeal of his sons and successors, the devotion to the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, once their family property, now the treasure of the whole world.

The prophecy of the aged Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of the divine Child in Jerusalem, the carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, the taking down from the Cross, and the burial of Jesus: these are the seven mysteries into which are grouped the well-nigh infinite sufferings which made Our Lady the Queen of martyrs, the first and loveliest rose in the garden of the Spouse. Let us take to heart the recommendation of the Book of Tobias, which the Church reads during this week in the Office of the Time: Thou shalt honor thy mother: for thou must be mindful what and how great perils she suffered in giving thee birth. (Tobias 4:3, 14)

MASS

The daily Sacrifice, though surrounded with all the pomps of the Liturgy, is substantially the same as that of Calvary. But the only assistants at the foot of the Cross were, as our Introit points out, one single man, and a few women weeping around the Mother of sorrows. The Gospel will repeat this Introit, and even its verse which, contrary to custom, is not taken from the Psalms.

INTROIT

There stood by the Cross of Jesus his Mother, and his Mother’s sister Mary of Cleophas, and Salome, and Mary Magdalene.

℣. Woman, behold thy son, said Jesus; to the disciple however, Behold thy mother. Glory be. There stood.

The honoring of our Lady’s Dolours does not distract our thoughts from the one Victim of salvation. On the contrary, its immediate result, as the Collect shows, is to cause the Passion of our Savior to bear fruit in our souls.

COLLECT

O God, in whose Passion, according to the prophecy of Simeon, a sword of sorrow pierced the most sweet soul of the glorious Mary, Mother and Virgin: grant in thy mercy, that we who call to mind her sorrows with veneration, may obtain the happy effect of thy Passion. Who livest, etc.

Then is added the Collect of the occurring Sunday.

EPISTLE

Lesson from the Book of Judith 13:22-25

The Lord hath blessed thee by his power, because by thee he hath brought our enemies to nought. Blessed art thou, O daughter, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth. Blessed be the Lord who made heaven and earth, who hath directed thee to the cutting off the head of the prince of our enemies. Because he hath so magnified thy name this day, that thy praise shall not depart out of the mouth of men who shall be mindful of the power of the Lord for ever, for that thou hast not spared thy life, by reason of the distress and tribulation of thy people, but hast prevented our ruin in the presence of our God.

Oh, the greatness of our Judith among all creatures! “God,” says the pious and profound Father Faber, “vouchsafed to select the very things about him which are most incommunicable, and in a most mysteriously real way communicate them to her. See how he had already mixed her up with the eternal designs of creation, making her almost a partial cause and partial model of it. Our Lady’s cooperation in the redemption of the world gives us a fresh view of her magnificence. Neither the Immaculate Conception nor the Assumption will give us a higher idea of Mary’s exaltation than the title of co-redemptress. Her dolours were not necessary for the resurrection of the world, but in the counsel of God they were inseparable from it. They belong to the integrity of the divine plan. Are not Mary’s mysteries Jesus’ mysteries, and his mysteries hers? The truth appears to be that all the mysteries of Jesus and Mary were in God’s designs as one mystery. Jesus himself was Mary’s sorrow, seven times repeated, aggravated seven-fold. During the hours of the Passion, the offering of Jesus and the offering of Mary were tied in one. They kept pace together; they were made of the same materials; they were perfumed with kindred fragrance; they were lighted with the same fire; they were offered with kindred dispositions. The two things were one simultaneous oblation, interwoven each moment through the thickly crowded mysteries of that dread time unto the Eternal, out of two sinless Hearts, that were the Hearts of Son and Mother, for the sins of a guilty world which fell on them contrary to their merits, but according to their own free will.” (Faber, The Foot of the Cross 9:1-2)

Let us mingle our tears with Mary’s, in union with the sufferings of the great Victim. In proportion as we do this during life we shall rejoice in heaven with the Son and the Mother; if our Lady is now, as we sing in the Alleluia-Verse, Queen of heaven and mistress of the world, is there one among all the elect who can recall sufferings comparable to hers?

After the Gradual follows the Stabat Mater, the touching Complaint attributed to the Franciscan, Blessed Jacopone de Todi.

GRADUAL

Thou art sorrowful and worthy of tears, O Virgin Mary, standing near the Cross of the Lord Jesus, thy Son, our Redeemer.

℣. O Virgin Mother of God, he whom the whole world doth not contain, beareth this punishment of the Cross, he the author of life being made man.

Alleluia, alleluia.

℣. Holy Mary, the Queen of heaven, and mistress of the world, stood by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, full of sadness.

SEQUENCE

At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.

Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
all His bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has passed.

O how sad and sore distressed
was that Mother, highly blessed,
of the sole-begotten One.

Christ above in torment hangs,
she beneath beholds the pangs
of her dying glorious Son.

Is there one who would not weep,
whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ’s dear Mother to behold?

Can the human heart refrain
from partaking in her pain,
in that Mother’s pain untold?

Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled,
she beheld her tender Child
All with scourges rent:

For the sins of His own nation,
saw Him hang in desolation,

O thou Mother! fount of love!
Touch my spirit from above,
make my heart with thine accord:

Make me feel as thou hast felt;
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.

Holy Mother! pierce me through,
in my heart each wound renew
of my Savior crucified:

Let me share with thee His pain,
who for all my sins was slain,
who for me in torments died.

Let me mingle tears with thee,
mourning Him who mourned for me,
all the days that I may live:

By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.

Virgin of all virgins blessed!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;

Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.

Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;

Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.

Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;

While my body here decays,
may my soul Thy goodness praise,
safe in paradise with Thee. Amen.

GOSPEL

Sequel of the holy Gospel according to St. John 19:25-27

At that time, there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own.

Woman, behold thy son.—My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Such are the words of Jesus on the Cross in our Gospel. Has he, then, no longer a Father in heaven, a Mother on earth? Oh! mystery of justice, and still more of love! God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son for it, so far as to lay upon him, instead of upon sinful men, the curse our sins deserved, and our Lady too, in her sublime union with the Father, did not spare, but offered in like manner for us all, this same Son of her virginity. If on this head we belong to the Eternal Father, we belong henceforth to Mary also; each has bought us at a great price: the exchange of any only Son for sons of adoption.

It is at the foot of the Cross that our Lady truly became the Queen of mercy. At the foot of the Altar, where the renewal of the great Sacrifice is preparing, let us commend ourselves to her omnipotent influence over the Heart of her divine Son.

OFFERTORY

Be mindful, O Virgin Mother of God, when thou standest in the sight of the Lord, to speak good things for us, that he may turn away his anger from us.

How many holy souls, in the course of ages, have come to keep faithful company with the Mother of sorrows! Their intercession united with Mary’s is a strength to the Church; and we hope to obtain thereby the effect of the merits of our Savior’s death.

SECRET

We offer to thee prayers and sacrifices, O Lord Jesus Christ, humbly beseeching, that we who pray in remembrance of the transfixion of the most sweet soul of blessed Mary thy Mother, by the multiplied and pious intercession of her and her holy companions under the cross, may have a reward with the blessed, by the merits of thy death. Who livest.

A commemoration is then made of the Sunday.

The Preface is the same as on the 8th of September, except that for in Nativitate, on the Navitity is substituted in Transfixione, on the Transfixion of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin.

So great, it has been said (Bernardin of Siena, Pro festivit. V.M. Sermo xiii. De exaltatione B.V. in gloria, art ii. c. 2), was Mary’s grief on Calvary, that had it been divided among all creatures capable of suffering, it would have caused them all to die instantly. It was our Lady’s wonderful peace, maintained by perfect acquiescence and the total abandonment of her whole being to God, that alone was able to sustain in her the life which the Holy Ghost was preserving for the Church’s sake. May our participation in the sacred mysteries give us that peace of God which passeth all understanding and which keepeth minds and hearts in Christ Jesus!

COMMUNION

Happy senses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which without dying deserved the palm of martyrdom beneath the cross of our Lord.

As the Postcommunion points out, the loving memory of our Mother’s sorrows will powerfully assist us to find all good things in the holy Sacrifice of the Altar.

POSTCOMMUNION

O Lord Jesus Christ, may the sacrifices of which we have partaken, in the devout celebration of the transfixion of thy Virgin Mother, obtain for us of thy clemency the effect of every salutary good. Who livest, etc.

The Postcommunion of the occurring Sunday is added, and the Gospel of the same is read at the end of the Mass instead of the usual passage from St. John.

VESPERS

The first and fifth antiphons of Vespers are taken from the Canticle of canticles, the three intermediate ones from Isaias, and that of the Magnificat from Job; the capitulum is from Jeremias.

1. ANT. Whither is they beloved gone, O thou most beautiful among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside, and we will seek him with thee?

Ps. Dixit Dominus.

2. ANT. Depart from me, I will weep bitterly: labor not to comfort me..

Ps. Laudate pueri.

3. ANT. There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness.

Ps. Lætatus sum.

4. ANT. From the sole of the foot unto the top of the head, there is no soundness in him.

Ps. Nisi Dominus.

5. ANT. Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples, because I languish with love..

Ps. Lauda Jerusalem.

CAPITULUM
(Thren ii.)

TO what shall I compare thee? or to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? to what shall I equal thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Sion? for great as the sea is thy destruction.

HYMN

Oh! in what floods of tears, in what an abyss of sorrow is she whelmed, that Virgin Mother, as mourning she beholds her Son taken down from the blood-stained tree and laid in her arms!

That lovely mouth, that gentle breast, that side most sweet, that right hand all pierced, and the left hand wounded too, those fee all rosy with his blood: the desolate Mother bathes them with her tears.

A hundred and a thousand times she locks in loving embrace that breast and those arms, and kisses their wounds; and thus she melts away in sorrowful caresses.

O Mother, we beseech thee, by these thy tears, by the cruel death of thy Son, and by his empurpled wounds, plant deep in our hearts this anguish of thine own.

To the Father and to the Son and to the coequal Spirit, to the most high Trinity, be everlasting glory, unending praise and honor, now and forevermore.

Amen.

℣. Pray for us, O Queen of martyrs.

℟. Who didst stand by the cross of Jesus.

ANTIPHON OF THE MAGNIFICAT

My sorrow hath oppressed me, my face is swollen with weeping, and my eyelids are dim.

The Prayer is the Collect of the Mass.

Our Lady of Sorrows: A Brief & Guided Meditation of the Sorrows

A sermon for today. Please remember to say 3 Hail Marys for the Priest.

St Nicomedes, Martyr: Butler's Lives of the Saints

Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

St Nicomedes, Martyr

From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:

HE was a holy priest at Rome, who was apprehended in the persecution of Domitian for his assiduity in assisting the martyrs in their conflicts, and for interring their bodies. Refusing constantly to sacrifice to idols, he was beaten to death with clubs about the year ninety. His tomb was on the road to Nomento, and he is commemorated on this day in the sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, and in the Martyrologies of St. Jerom, Bede, &c. See the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus.

Feasts of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Before the reforms, there were two Feasts of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the Friday before Palm Sunday, and the third Sunday in September. Now it is kept on 15 September.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

There are two such days:

• Friday before Palm Sunday, major double;

• third Sunday in September double of the second class.

The object of these feasts is the spiritual martyrdom of the Mother of God and her compassion with the sufferings of her Divine Son. (1) The seven founders of the Servite Order, in 1239, five years after they established themselves on Monte Senario, took up the sorrows of Mary, standing under the Cross, as the principal devotion of their order. The corresponding feast, however, did not originate with them; its celebration was enacted by a provincial synod of Cologne (1413) to expiate the crimes of the iconoclast Hussites; it was to be kept on the Friday after the third Sunday after Easter under the title: "Commemoratio angustix et doloris B. Marix V.". Its object was exclusively the sorrow of Mary during the Crucifixion and Death of Christ. Before the sixteenth century this feast was limited to the dioceses of North Germany, Scandinavia, and Scotland. Being termed "Compassio" or "Transfixio", Commendatio, Lamentatio B.M.V.", it was kept at a great variety of dates, mostly during Eastertide or shortly after Pentacost, or on some fixed day of a month (18 July, Merseburg; 19 July, Halberstadt, Lxbeck, Meissen; 20 July, Naumberg; cf. Grotefend, "Zeitrechnung", II, 2, 166). Dreves and Blume (Analecta hymnica) have published a large number of rhythmical offices, sequences and hymns for the feast of the Compassion, which show that from the end of the fifteenth century in several dioceses the scope of this feast was widened to commemorate either five dolours, from the imprisonment to the burial of Christ, or seven dolours, extending over the entire life of Mary (cf. XXIV, 122-53; VIII, 51 sq.; X, 79 sq., etc.). Towards the end of the end of the sixteenth century the feast spread over part of the south of Europe; in 1506 it was granted to the nuns of the Annunciation under the title "Spasmi B.M.V.", Monday after Passion Sunday; in 1600 to the Servite nuns of Valencia, "B.M.V. sub pede Crucis", Friday before Palm Sunday. After 1600 it became popular in France and was termed "Dominx N. de Pietate", Friday before Palm Sunday. To this latter date the feast was assigned for the whole German Empire (1674). By a Decree of 22 April 1727, Benedict XIII extended it to the entire Latin Church, under the title "Septem dolorum B.M.V.", although the Office and Mass retain the original character of the feast, the Compassion of Mary at the foot of the Cross. At both Mass and Office the "Stabat Mater" of Giacopone da Todi (1306) is sung.

(2) The second feast was grated to the Servites, 9 June and 15 September, 1668, double with an octave for the third Sunday in September. Its object of the seven dolours of Mary (according to the responsories of Matins: the sorrow

• at the prophecy of Simeon;

• at the flight into Egypt;

• having lost the Holy Child at Jerusalem;

• meeting Jesus on his way to Calvary;

• standing at the foot of the Cross;

• Jesus being taken from the Cross;

• at the burial of Christ.

This feast was extended to Spain (1735); to Tuscany (double of the second class with an octave, 1807). After his return from his exile in France Pius VII extended the feast to the Latin Church (18 September, 1814), major double); it was raised to the rank of a double of the second class, 13 May, 1908. The Servites celebrate it as a double of the first class with an octave and a vigil. Also in the Passionate Order, at Florence and Granada (N.S. de las Angustias), its rank is double of the first class with an octave. The hymns which are now used in the Office of this feast were probably composed by the Servite Callisto Palumbella (eighteenth century). On the devotion, cf. Kellner, "Heortology", p. 271. The old title of the "Compassio" is preserved by the Diocese of Hildesheim in a simple feast, Saturday after the octave of Corpus Christi. A feast, "B.M.V. de pietate", with a beautiful medieval office, is kept in honour of the sorrowful mother at Goa in India and Braga in Portugal, on the third Sunday of October; in the ecclesiastical province of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, last Sunday of May, etc. (cf. the corresponding calendars). A special form of devotion is practised in Spanish-speaking countries under the term of "N.S. de la Soledad", to commemorate the solitude of Mary on Holy Saturday. Its origin goes back to Queen Juana, lamenting the early death of her husband Philip I, King of Spain (1506).

To the oriental churches these feasts are unknown; the Catholic Ruthenians keep a feast of the sorrowful Mother on Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi.