Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 15

The Lesson is taken from a Sermon by Bernard the Abbot

The Martyrdom of the Virgin is set before us, not only in the prophecy of Simeon, but also in the story itself of the Lord’s Passion. The holy old man said of the Child Jesus: Behold, this Child is set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; yea (said he unto Mary), a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also. Even so, O Blessed Mother! The sword did indeed pierce through thy soul! for nought could pierce the Body of thy Son, nor pierce thy soul likewise. Yea, and when this Jesus of thine had given up the ghost, and the bloody spear could torture him no more, thy soul winced as it pierced his dead side―his own Soul might leave him, but thine could not.

The sword of sorrow pierced through thy soul, so that we may truly call thee more than martyr, in whom the love, that made thee suffer along with thy Son, wrung thy heart more bitterly than any pang of bodily pain could do. Did not that word of his indeed pierce through thy soul, sharper than any two-edged sword, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit: Woman, behold thy son! O what a change to thee! Thou art given John for Jesus, the servant for his Lord, the disciple for his Master, the son of Zebedee for the Son of God, a mere man for Very God. O how keenly must the hearing of those words have pierced through thy most loving soul, when even our hearts, stony, iron, as they are, are wrung at the memory thereof only!

Marvel not, my brethren, that Mary should be called a Martyr in spirit. He indeed may marvel who remembereth not what Paul saith, naming the greater sins of the Gentiles, that they were without natural affection. Far other were the bowels of Mary, and far other may those of her servants be! But some man perchance will say: Did she not hope that he was soon to rise again? Yea, she most faithfully hoped it. And did she still mourn because he was crucified? Yea, bitterly. But who art thou, my brother, or whence hast thou such wisdom, to marvel less that the Son of Mary suffered than that Mary suffered with him? He could die in the Body, and could not she die with him in her heart? His was the deed of that Love, greater than which hath no man, her’s, of a love, like to which hath no man, save he.

The Lesson is taken from the Holy Gospel according to John

Chap. 19, 25-27

At that time: There stood by the Cross of Jesus his Mother, and his Mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. And so on, and that which followeth.

A Homily by St. Ambrose the Bishop

There stood by the Cross of Jesus his Mother. Men had forsaken him, but she stood there fearless. Behold, how the Mother of Jesus could break through her shrinking modesty, but could not belie her heart. With the eyes of a mother’s love she gazed upon the wounds of her Son, those wounds through which she knew that redemption for all mankind was flowing. The Mother, who feared not the executioners, was able to endure the sight of their work. Her son was hanging upon the Cross, and she braved his tormentors.

Mary, the Mother of the Lord, stood by the Cross of her Son. My only informant of this fact is the holy Evangelist John. Others have written that when the Lord suffered, the earth quaked, the heavens were veiled in darkness, the sun was hidden, and the thief received, after a good confession, the promise of Paradise. John hath taught us what the others have not taught us. Upon the Cross he called her Mother. It is reckoned a greater thing that in the moment of triumph over agony, he should have discharged the watchful duty of a Son to his Mother, than that he should have made gift of the kingdom of heaven. For if it be a sacred thing to have forgiven the thief, this so great kindness of the Son to the Mother is to be worshipped as the outcome of a tenderer and more touching love.

This Nicomedes was a priest who was ordered to be seized during the persecution of the Christians by the Emperor Domitian, because he had buried the body of the Virgin Felicula, who had been slain by the Count Flaccus for confessing the Christian Faith. He was led to the statues of the gods, and forasmuch as he stoutly disobeyed the command to sacrifice to them, since sacrifice is due only to the one true God who reigneth in heaven, he was flogged with scourges loaded with lead until he sealed his testimony by giving up his spirit to God. The said Count Flaccus ordered his body to be thrown into the floods of the Tiber, but Justus, clerk to Nicomedes, sought diligently for it until he found it, and buried it honourably upon the Via Nomentana, hard by the walls of the city.