Unfathomable.
Just unfathomable
Only a handful of genuine mystics and truly gifted spiritual masters have been able to comprehend the unfathomable mysteries of grief that overwhelmed the fairest creature of our race, Our Lady, as those Seven Swords of Sorrow were plunged through and through her Immaculate Heart. We sin so casually, so thoughtlessly, so repeatedly, rarely giving a moment’s worth of a meditation to how our least Venial Sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer unspeakable horrors during His Passion and Death, horrors that penetrated the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother as she, conceived without any stain of Original or Actual Sin, suffered in a perfect communion of Hearts with Him. It cannot be that way with us from this day forward.
We are on the cusp of Holy Week, ending now the first week in Passiontide, Passion Week. We must enter deep into the mysteries of our salvation, which was wrought for us by the perfect obedience of the Word made Flesh in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate Womb to the Will of His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father. We must quit our sins once and for all, recognizing how they caused the God-Man and His Most Blessed Mother to suffer, how they wound our own souls, which have been purchased by the shedding of every single drop of the Divine Redeemer’s Most Precious Blood, and how they have brought great sorrow into the Heart out of which was formed Our Redeemer’s Most Sacred Heart.
No more sin.
No more joking about sin.
No more dismissiveness about the gravity of sin.
We must repent and amend our lives as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady brought forth her Divine Son painlessly and miraculously. She brought us forth in great pain as the adopted children of the Living God as she stood so valiantly by the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. She stands by the foot of her Divine Son’s Most Holy Cross in every true offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by a true bishop or a true priest. We must stand by her each day at Holy Mass as we make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world with every beat of our hearts, making sure as well to pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.
As a courtesy to Catholics worldwide, the entire text of The Servite Manual: BEHOLD THY MOTHER: A Collection of Devotions Chiefly in Honor of OUR LADY OF SORROWS has been placed online at the website of Saint Augustine Chapel (Carrollton, Virginia): The Servite Manual: BEHOLD THY MOTHER. Devotions in honor of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary run from pages 169-234.
A blessed Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary to you all!
The next original article for this site will be published about fifteen minutes after this posting.
A brief republished reflection about Saint John Damascene was posted a short while ago.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Saint John Damascene, pray for us.