FEAST OF OUR LADY OF SORROWS - 15TH SEPTEMBER 2025

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. We all know that suffering is hard and it's even harder when we suffer alone. For the Christian, no one suffers alone. The experience of suffering is a participation in the suffering of Christ who suffers with us and goes ahead of us. So too we suffer with our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ that is the Church - that somehow our suffering connects us to the lives of others who suffer with us and suffer even more.

The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows is a window through which we see this truth. It follows on from yesterday’s feast of the Triumph of the Cross. If you love someone and they suffer, then you suffer too. This is the experience of life and of us all. To love is to suffer. They cannot be separated. It was also the experience of Mary. She loved her Son with a love beyond all telling. And because she did, she suffered immensely as he suffered before her eyes. She suffered with him. His agony was hers.

From the cross, Jesus entrusted Mary to all his disciples - ‘Son/daughter behold your mother’. He also entrusted us to her – ‘Mother behold your son/daughter’.

For all of those who suffer, it means that Mary suffers too. She suffers because she loves us and because she loves us she suffers when we do. As she was there with her Son from beginning to end, so she is with us at every step of life’s journey. With her gentle care she is with us now, gently mothering us to keep going with her beyond the darkness and towards the light of resurrection.

Above is a photo of Michelangelo's Pieta in St Peter's Basilica in Rome where I was last week, where Mary cradles the dead body of her Son. She is Our Lady of Sorrows but also Our Lady of Light and Hope.