quiet and standing - 23rd week Friday Sorrows of Mary
Today we celebrate the Memorial of
the Seven Sorrows of our Blessed Mother after celebrating the Exaltation of the
Cross yesterday.
In our gospel today we find Mary at
the foot of the cross with the other women and John. In the traditional list of the 7 sorrows,
this gospel passage is counted as the 5th sword which pierced her
heart.
When we suffer there is always the
tendency in us to search for meaning, to find answers, to ask the question why
– why me, why do I have to suffer, why must I bear this pain? It is an age-old question asked since the
time of Adam and Eve and there were attempts too to answer the question
beginning with Job and Sirach and St. Paul.
I believe that this feast of the memorial of the sorrowful mother is
also an attempt by the church to explain to us the mystery of suffering. And how does this feast explain to us
suffering? Two things.
If you notice in all her suffering
Mary remained quiet. She accepted things
quietly and even when she could not understand what was happening and what was
being said, she merely accepted them, treasured them and pondered them in her
heart. In all her seven sorrows Mary
remained silent. This was Mary’s attitude
when she confronted mystery.
I remember in the first 2 years of
my priesthood when I got sick and pain was all over my body I could hardly move,
many well-meaning parishioners came to me with advises and attempts to explain
why I had this pain. When you already have a lot of questions in your head and
people add more and more to these, thinking that they are helping you, you get
fed up, and one time I had to tell one parishioner, rather rudely, shut
up. Suffering is a mystery and no amount
of explanation can give a satisfactory answer, and like Mary the best way to
deal with it is to confront it in silence.
Second. Mary was not only silent. She was also standing. The church would always defend this position
of the sorrowful mother against artists who would render this passage dramatic
in art. Yes, Mary was sorrowful, yes she
was suffering, she was in pain but she remained standing. Standing is the position of the resurrection,
it is a position of triumph, a position of victory, a position of hope. That is why in the mass when the priest says
let us pray we always stand – even in our need, even in our misery, we stand. And that too is how we confront suffering –
we stand, not physically perhaps but inwardly triumphant, victorious and always
full of hope because of Jesus.
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