(LifeSiteNews) — Many meditations on Our Lady of Sorrows emphasize the suffering she endured at the foot of the Cross.
For instance, the excellent Practical Meditations for Every Day of the Year offers the following parallel as a way of understanding Our Lady’s suffering:
To understand in some measure how much she suffers, we must conceive the idea of a mother, the tenderest of mothers, who loves nothing so much as her son, her only son; this Son, the greatest of the children of men, she is forced to see die in the prime of His days, by no natural death, but by the hand of the executioner, surrounded by an angry mob, nailed living on a cross, after having been covered with wounds from head to foot, crowned with thorns; to behold Him struggling with death for three long hours, without being able in the least to assuage His agony!
Did ever a mother suffer such a martyrdom?
Although the anonymous Jesuit goes further in his meditation, it can sometimes feel like our reflections stop here. We contemplate Our Lady in light of the other mothers whom we know, and we imagine how they would feel under such circumstances.
But Holy Scripture gives us a striking parallel: the mother of the seven Maccabean martyrs.
The heroism of the Maccabean mother
The books of the Maccabees recount the Maccabean revolt against King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and his persecution of the Jewish people. Antiochus—frequently presented as foreshadowing of the Antichrist—imposed pagan rites on Judea and forbade the Jewish religion.
During this persecution, seven brothers and their mother were arrested and commanded to break the Law by eating pork. When they refused, they were tortured and killed one by one.
The eldest son was the first to die:
Then the king being angry, commanded frying-pans and brazen caldrons to be made hot: which forthwith being heated, he commanded to cut out the tongue of him that had spoken first: and the skin of his head being drawn off, to chop off also the extremities of his hands and feet, the rest of his brethren and his mother looking on. (2 Mach 7:3-4)
But this was no scene of helpless lamentation. Scripture gives us a different picture:
[W]hile he was suffering therein long torments, the rest, together with the mother, exhorted one another to die manfully, saying:
‘The Lord God will look upon the truth, and will take pleasure in us, as Moses declared in the profession of the canticle; And in his servants he will take pleasure.’ ( 2 Mach. 7:5-6)
Each brother dies with bold declarations of faith and fidelity to the Divine Law. The mother does not try to shield her sons from death, but courageously consents to their actions, and exhorts them to face it manfully for the Law of God:
‘I know not how you were formed in my womb; for I neither gave you breath, nor soul, nor life, neither did I frame the limbs of every one of you.’
‘But the Creator of the world, that formed the nativity of man, and that found out the origin of all, he will restore to you again, in his mercy, both breath and life, as now you despise yourselves for the sake of his laws.’ (2 Mach. 7:20-23)
After the sixth has been killed, the youngest is brought forward—and here the tyrant tries a different tactic. Hoping to break his resolve, he promises him riches and advancement if he only transgresses the Law.
When this fails, he appeals to the mother, begging her to convince the boy. She agrees to speak—but only to strengthen her son in his martyrdom:
So bending herself towards him, mocking the cruel tyrant, she said in her own language:
‘My son have pity upon me, that bore thee nine months in my womb, and gave thee suck three years, and nourished thee, and brought thee up unto this age.’
‘I beseech thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them, and consider that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also: so thou shalt not fear this tormentor, but being made a worthy partner with thy brethren, receive death, that in that mercy I may receive thee again with thy brethren.’
While she was yet speaking these words, the young man said:
‘For whom do you stay? I will not obey the commandment of the king, but the commandment of the law which was given us by Moses.’ (2 Mach. 7:26-30).
Her son responds to the king in a manner worthy of his brothers and his mother:
‘[T]hou, by the judgment of God, shalt receive just punishment for thy pride.’
‘But I, like my brethren, offer up my life and my body for the laws of our fathers: calling upon God to be speedily merciful to our nation, and that thou by torments and stripes mayst confess that he alone is God.’
‘But in me, and in my brethren, the wrath of the Almighty, which hath justly been brought upon all our nation, shall cease.’ (2 Mach. 7.36-38)
After his death, Scripture says simply:
Last of all, the mother also was consumed. (v. 41)
Holy Scripture’s judgment of the mother
Then comes the final verdict on this extraordinary woman:
Now the mother was to be admired above measure, and worthy to be remembered by good men, who beheld her seven sons slain in the space of one day, and bore it with a good courage, for the hope that she had in God: and she bravely exhorted every one of them in her own language, being filled with wisdom; and joining a man’s heart to a woman’s thought. (2 Mach. 7.20-1)
The most striking thing about this account is that the mother was not simply an onlooker as her sons were slaughtered before her eyes.
Her sons were brave, and were prepared to suffer torments and death for God’s glory, rather than disobey his Will—to which they were more committed than to their own lives. In this, their mother agreed, consented, and encouraged them.
The last son offered his life specifically as an atoning sacrifice to God, trusting both that he would receive it back in the resurrection, and that this sacrifice would appease the righteous anger of God: and he did so at his mother’s counsel and encouragement.
Our Lady stood at the foot of the cross
This mother’s courage throws into sharper relief our own assumptions about Our Lady of Sorrows. It leads us to ask:
- Was she any less committed to the will of God?
- Did she offer any less consent to her Son’s sacrifice?
- Was her sorrow merely that of maternal loss, or the anguish of a lovingly consenting will?
Surely not. The only way we could think such things is by assuming Our Lady did not know what was happening—whereas she knew from before the Annunciation that the Christ would have to suffer and die to redeem mankind. The anonymous Jesuit writer tells us:
[W]e may truly say that she endured this martyrdom for thirty-three years, knowing, to the smallest particular, all that awaited her from the hour of Simeon’s prophecy.
She knew that Calvary was the reason that Christ had been born, and she knew that it represented the greatest sacrifice ever rendered to God and the triumph of her Son over all the forces of evil.
Tradition also tells us that she not only had a perfect understanding of the Scriptures, but that she was closely united to the movements of the Sacred Heart itself.
Thus we may consider that she stood—and she did stand—at the foot of the Cross, suffering as only she could: but with her will completely and perfectly united to what her Son was doing, consenting and silently encouraging him in the offering of himself as a sacrifice to God, for the sake of mankind.
Although it seems most unlikely that she would have spoken anything like the words of the Maccabean mother, it seems impossible that her sentiments and positive conformity to the Will of God could have been less than hers—or that her presence could have been less encouraging to her son.
The paradox at the foot of the Cross
Perhaps Our Lady’s greatest sorrow was not simply witnessing the Passion, but consenting to it and willing it—freely, consciously, and in union with her Son.
All this casts Our Lady of Sorrows in a different light altogether. Her sorrows were not like any other mother’s. They arose not only from seeing her son suffer, but from the fact that she consented to this suffering and herself wanted him to consummate his sacrifice, just as he did wanted it.
Far from being like any pitiful mother watching her children suffer, she is the most zealous, committed and loyal of all his followers—even as this zeal itself increased her sorrows, and provided her with new sufferings to which she could consent.
Thus we pity her sorrows, but we also admire her courage and her zeal—which may have been incomprehensible to others at the foot of the Cross.
This is why the Church rightly honours her as Co-Redemptrix: not as an equal to the Redeemer, but as one who, in perfect union with him, consented to and thus participated in his redeeming sacrifice. In offering him to the Father, she united herself to his own offering, and offered herself—freely, knowingly, and with full consent.
This cannot be said about any other human being. It is through this incomparable zeal that she, along with her Seed, crushed the serpent’s head. This zealous adhesion to her Son is why we invoke her as she who has destroyed all heresies throughout the world. And it is why the Byzantine tradition acclaims her as the Victorious Leader of Triumphant Hosts.
Conclusion—Let us honor her consent
In the words of Father Luis de la Palma, we see this mystery brought to its highest expression: Our Lady gloried in the Cross, not in spite of her sorrow, but along with it and even through it.
Who shall say that the Blessed Virgin was ashamed of her Son because He had died with so much infamy on the Cross, when the Apostle found nothing else in which He could glory save in this self-same Cross? The Blessed Virgin, moreover, had all the more reason to glory therein, seeing that she had received through it even more graces and favours than the Apostle.
Thou, O Lady, knewest then the mystery of the Cross better than the Apostle, even after the Gospel had been preached and received. Thou, in thy great humility, knewest better how to esteem and be thankful for the graces of God than any other creature, thou knewest well that all these graces had been gained for thee by thy Son upon the Cross. […]
‘My Son,’ she would say, ‘who is it that has done thus unto Thee? I do not complain, Lord, of those who have taken Thy life, since Thou didst offer it of Thy own will for them through obedience to Thy Eternal Father. O Eternal Father! blessed be Thy providence, and blessed be Thy bounty and Thy love, Who, in order to give life to slaves, hast delivered to death Thy very Son Himself!
‘My Son, these were Thy longings; Thy desires are now fulfilled. These wounds, these sufferings, these nails, and this lance which I now see on Thy body — all these are what Thou hast borne throughout all Thy life in Thy Heart. How couldst Thou live, seeing Thou hadst to bear therein so heavy a cross? […]
‘[I]f Thou wert so conformed to the will of Thy Father then, I also am conformed to Thine, it is sufficient that Thou shouldst have willed it, in order that I should will it also, and enough that Thou shouldst have felt it, in order that I should also feel it. O Eternal Father, Who art well pleased and satisfied with the sacrifice of His body which this innocent Lamb has offered Thee! receive likewise that which His afflicted Mother offers Thee in her heart, and this very day, grant abundant mercy to sinners, since it is for their sakes that Thou hast executed so rigorous justice upon Thy Son.’
Thus the Blessed Virgin, with a heart pierced with sharpest grief, was rapt in sublimest contemplation, and her Son, Who, but a little season before, being alive, had offered Himself up with burning charity on the arms of a dead Cross, now, being dead, was laid within the arms of His living Mother. She felt all His sufferings, and offered them also, as far as was her part to do so, for the honor of God and the salvation of men, with all the force of the charity communicated to her by the Holy Spirit.
So well pleasing to God was that love with which, in the midst of so many griefs, the Blessed Virgin strained herself to desire the redemption and salvation of the human race, that, as her Son was made a Mediator and the Redeemer of all mankind, so she also became a mediator and advocate for the same.
Let us then honor Our Lady of Sorrows not only as the one who suffered, but as the one who consented to his sacrifice, for the glory of God and for our salvation. In so doing, she shows us how to unite our own sufferings to his—by choosing to consent to the will of God even when it costs us everything:
Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.
