The month of September brings small reminders
of the upcoming fall. Children get ready for the first day of school and
the days begin to inch shorter. Perhaps for some a little bit of melancholia
sets in, impelling one to ponder a bit on the more somber questions of life-why
are events not always drawn in straight lines? Does my suffering have a meaning?
Maybe this is why Holy Mother Church gives us the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows
on September 15. Here we have Mary, Immaculately Conceived, called to be
the Mother of God who would later be assumed into heaven body and soul, and
yet even she was called to suffer.
Suffering is the very means Our Lord chose to redeem us. As God, Christ could
have abolished suffering. He chose rather to embrace it and give it a new meaning.
Our Lord has called us to embrace suffering in our lives and unite it with
His for the redemption of the world. Even St. Paul tells us this: “Even
now I find joy in the suffering I endure for you. In my own flesh I fill up
what is lacking in sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body the church” (Col.
1:24-25).What St. Paul means is that Christ’s suffering in itself (the
objective redemption ) is infinitely sufficient for our salvation. However,
His redemption has to be applied to each one of us ( the subjective redemption
). We do this by taking up our cross. Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical letter
The Mystical Body , takes these words of Colossians 1:24 and applies them to
Mary saying she is the first one to offer her personal collaboration in order
to complete the Passion of Christ. No other human being, moreover, as ever
suffered with a more complete submission to the Divine Will. The Church in
Her ordinary magisterium calls this suffering of Mary Her “Compassion” (i.e.
Her Passion “With” Her Son).
We can follow the example of Mary by uniting our pains, both great and small, to the Passion of Christ for the salvation of the world. We can do this every time we hear those tender words to that touching hymn:
At the cross Her station keeping,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping;
Close to Jesus til the end
