Mary, Mother of Sorrows

Mary, Mother of Sorrows:  The Sixth Sorrow—Mary receives the dead body of her Son—Mary gazes upon the dead body of her Son and  grieves a loss beyond words. She embraces this incredible loss.

Grieving is a form of healing. It purifies the soul of bitterness and anger and transforms our pain into compassionate affection and understanding of others in their suffering.  During a sabbatical that I was privileged to take following my ministry as provincial, I was meeting with a psychologist to deal with losses in my life. I was relating a very painful period in my life when, at age 17, I lost my mother to cancer. A few months prior to that, my superiors made an exception to the rule and would have allowed me to attend my older sister’s wedding, which was advanced so that my mother would be present (her death was imminent). I played the role of the perfect postulant and declined the offer—a decision I regretted. For a time, I blamed my superiors for giving me that choice.  I reasoned that they were the adults, not me and were responsible for my decision. They were not.  In my attempts to relinquish my responsibility, I denied myself the freedom to grow in  truth. The psychologist asked me to identify all the losses connected with that decision. The pain was intense. I had not realized that I was holding on to that grief, thus decreasing my ability to empathize with others. To the point that I rigidly controlled my pain  and blamed others would be the degree to which I was inauthentic, thus deepening the tendency to function from a heart of stone, not a heart of flesh, from a position of untruth and a lack of freedom.

With Mary, may we learn to grieve our losses and be true to the reality of our lives, without blaming others, as Mary did not do. Dealing with that darkness and embracing our truth enables the light to glow more brightly, the heart to beat more tenderly, and the wounds to heal more graciously.