John 19:25-27

There is a saying that you can sacrifice without loving but you cannot love without sacrificing. In my many requests for prayers, one notices that when the child is suffering the mother is suffering even more. 

Today we celebrate the memorial of our Lady of Sorrows. Since the life of Jesus had many, many challenges, one would expect that Mama Mary suffered all the more. 

In the Catholic tradition, there is the tradition of the 7 sorrows of Mary:

• The prophecy of Simeon. (St. Luke 2:34, 35)
• The flight into Egypt. (St. Matthew 2:13, 14)
• The loss of the Child Jesus in the temple. (St. Luke 2: 43-45)
• The meeting of Jesus and Mary on the Way of the Cross.
• The Crucifixion.
• The taking down of the Body of Jesus from the Cross.
• The burial of Jesus.

Notice that in all these, it was what Jesus was going through. It was because of the Love for Jesus.

Hence, in this memorial of the Lady of Sorrows, three things we remember:

1. Love for Jesus. The best way to do this is to heed the commandments and teachings of Jesus. As Mary said during the Wedding at Cana, “Do whatever he tells you.”
   
2. Like a mother to Jesus, Mary is filled with sorrow when her children go astray. Hence in all her apparitions, her messages are all the same – repent, pray, pray for the conversion of sinners, pray the Rosary, go back to God. It is most painful for Mama Mary if we do not have eternal life. Hence in the Hail Mary, she prays for us who are sinners, “now and the hour of our death.”
   
3. When we love, we will have to sacrifice. In a world that glamorizes materialism and avoids pain, we must remember that when we love God, we will have to suffer. This is very much real these times of when the world has lost its moral compass. The wrong is made right and the right is made wrong. When we speak up against evil, there will be persecution. This is something to be expected as Jesus himself experienced this.

Certainly, these times, Mary must be in sorrow all the more. In 1917, humanity had been already offending God. What more, over 100 years later? Hence, we take heed of the call of our Mother more seriously – pray, repent, listen to Jesus.