September 10, 2006

     On Friday of this week, September 15, the Church celebrates the feast of Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows.  This is a feast that we often associate with the words of the Gospel where Mary is told that, as the Mother of Jesus who is the Savior,  a sword shall pierce her heart.  To be more precise, the Gospel says that she will experience seven major sorrows.  This bit of information had to be difficult even for the Mother of Jesus.  We must remember that she was only a young girl when she gave birth to this child.  When she presented Jesus in the temple she could not have been more than 16 or 17 years old. 

    Parents can easily relate to the idea of sorrow and suffering when they reflect on their own experiences with their children.  They are frequently challenged with situations that make them sad to one degree or other.  Watching their children suffer pain, seeing them make poor decisions in life, and for some parents the ultimate pain of losing a child all part of the process.  Being a parent gives much joy but it also places a person in a position which make them susceptible to sorrow.

    Sorrow is not limited to parents.  Everyone of us who has a friend or family member that we love, and I assume that is pretty much everyone, is placed in a similar position.  We all have had the experience of sorrow.  Why is that? A number of years ago I ran across a poster that read something like this: You risk crying when you have let yourself love.  Oh, how true!  I doubt that there is even one person out there that has not experienced this truth.

    Mary loved her son and she paid dearly by crying often.  She had a loving relationship with her son and crying was the consequence.  When we have loving relationships, we risk crying also.  If we have a loving relationship with Christ, and that is what it means to be a disciple of Christ, we know that sorrow will be related to our experience.  When Christ’s body is in pain, we will be in pain.  Unfortunately for us, the Body is growing with each new day so our chances of evading sorrow and pain is pretty nil.  We see Christ’s body suffering every time we watch the news or read the newspaper. 

    What can we do about the situation?  There is very little we can do to stop the pain.  We can look to Mary as a model however.  Did she run away from the relationship?  No, indeed, she did not.  She stayed with it until the end.  She walked through it, found herself a support group of sorts, and loved despite the pain.  The only way to evade the pain is to sever the relationship.  If Christ is only a name or an idea than there will be no pain.  If he is a real and loving part of our life than there will be pain and sorrow.  The good news is that there will also be extreme joy.  If there is no loving relationship there is no joy in life.  So, we have the choice.  We can live in limbo, somewhere in the realm of the head or we can allow ourselves to enter the heart experience and experience God.  It’s your choice. 

                            Lorette P. Nault