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Join us from September 6 to September 14 as we pray a Novena to Our Lady of Sorrows.
The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows focuses on the great suffering that Our Blessed Mother endured. This encompasses not only when she suffered during Our Lord’s passion and death, but also in her 7 sorrows. These sorrows are:
1) THE PROPHECY OF SIMEON (LUKE 2:22-35)
2) THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT (MATTHEW 2:13-15)
3) THE LOSS OF JESUS IN THE TEMPLE (LUKE 2:41-52)
4) MARY MEETS JESUS ON THE WAY TO CALVARY (LUKE 23:27-31)
5) MARY STANDS AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS (JOHN 19:25-27)
6) MARY RECEIVES THE DEAD BODY OF JESUS IN HER ARMS (JOHN 19:38-40)
7) THE BODY OF JESUS IS PLACED IN THE TOMB (JOHN 19:41-42)
This devotion grew in the 12th century and was placed in the Roman missal in 1482 originally called “The Feast of Our Lady of Compassion.” In 1814, Pope Pius X made the permanent date of September 15th to honor Our Lady of Sorrows.
Pope Saint John Paul the Great stated, “When a woman is in travail, she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world’ (Jn. 16:21). The first part of Christ’s words refer to the “pangs of childbirth” which belong to the heritage of original sin; at the same time these words indicate the link that exists between the woman’s motherhood and the Paschal Mystery. For this mystery also includes the Mother’s sorrow at the foot of the cross – the Mother who through faith shares in her Son’s amazing “self-emptying”: ‘This is perhaps the deepest ‘kenosis’ of faith in human history.”
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!