Our Lady of Sorrows

The memory of the sorrows that our Lady endured standing at the foot of her Son’s cross is appropriately celebrated on the day following the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows arose in the twelfth century, and in 1668 the Order of the Servants of Mary (Servites), who from their origin had a special devotion to Mary’s sorrows, were granted a liturgical feast to be celebrated on the third Sunday in September. Through the preaching of the Servites, the devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady spread in the Church, and the feast was then extended to the universal Church by Pope Pius VII in 1814 to recall the sufferings that the Church and her earthly head had undergone at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte (the pope had been held prisoner by Napoleon from 1809 to 1814), and in thanksgiving to our Lady for her ever-watchful care and through whose intercession the sufferings of the Church had come to an end. Because of Mary’s sharing in her Son’s sufferings on the cross, as today’s opening prayer reminds us, she has also been given to us as our Mother, as today’s Gospel (John 19:25–27) narrates.