The Seven Sorrows
of Our Lady

A warning within a promise

Simeon’s words are addressed to the Mother, but they concern the Son. This Child will be a sign of contradiction. The sword that will pierce Mary’s soul belongs to the history of His coming among us. Her sorrow cannot be understood apart from her love of Jesus.

The scene takes place in the Temple, where she has brought Him in obedience to the law. An act of worship becomes the occasion of a grave prophecy. Consider the Child in Simeon’s arms and Mary listening. The Gospel does not tell us her reply.

In prayer, remain with the cost of belonging to Christ. We often want obedience to assure us of an untroubled future. Mary’s first Sorrow places that desire before a different prospect: the Son she loves will be opposed. Ask for love of Him that will endure contradiction.

The news you carry home

A father comes home with news that his job may end. At supper his youngest child asks him to fix a toy. He answers impatiently, then sees the child put it away. The threatened loss is still in the future; the hurt he has just caused is already here.

Simeon’s prophecy gives him something to bring to prayer. Mary hears of the sword when Jesus is presented in the Temple. He can remain with that scene through the seven Hail Marys, asking for help with the fear that has begun to govern his household.

The toy will still be there when he finishes. So will the child. An apology and a few minutes beside him are a place to begin. Tomorrow may require difficult decisions. Tonight, this father has someone to love.

The Child whom Joseph protects

The Son of God is carried out of danger as a little Child. St. Matthew tells the story through Joseph’s obedience: he receives the warning, rises, takes the Child and His Mother, and departs by night. Mary shares the journey and the exile of her Son.

Consider the humility of the Incarnation. Our Saviour has entered a human household. The care of Joseph and Mary belongs to His earthly life, and a ruler’s violence drives that household from its home. The Gospel gives us enough to contemplate: Joseph’s obedience, the departure by night, and the Holy Family’s exile.

Bring before Christ those whose homes are unsafe and those charged with protecting them. Joseph’s departure gives this prayer a practical seriousness. When a vulnerable person is entrusted to us, love may require an inconvenient and decisive act.

A place at the table

A family has arrived with more bags than furniture. Their children do not know the neighbourhood. Even the ordinary business of finding food, transport, and a place to sleep has become unfamiliar.

Consider the Flight into Egypt from the position of someone who could offer shelter. Would you notice the newcomers? Would your questions serve their needs, or merely satisfy your curiosity? Joseph takes the Child and His Mother out of danger. The people who meet a displaced family have their own decisions to make.

During this Sorrow, remember a household far from home. If you know such a family, ask what would be useful. A place at the table can be offered without requiring the story of how they came to need it.

His Father’s business

Mary’s words make the sorrow of the search plain: she and Joseph have sought Jesus sorrowing. His reply turns their attention to His Father. St. Luke then says that they did not understand the saying He spoke to them.

Read the whole passage, St. Luke 2:41-52, when you can. The finding leads back to Nazareth, where Jesus is subject to them and Mary keeps these things in her heart. The mystery holds together His divine mission and the hidden obedience of His family life.

The Third Sorrow concerns Mary’s loss and search, rather than a fault attributed to her. In our meditation, it can awaken a desire to seek Christ more earnestly. Ask what place He has in your life when other concerns become urgent. Do you return to Him only after everything else has been attended to?

The prayer you almost leave unsaid

The book is open, but you have read the same line three times. Yesterday’s argument returns. Then tomorrow’s work. You remember a time when prayer seemed easy and wonder what has happened to you.

In the Third Sorrow, stay with the search. Mary and Joseph go back to Jerusalem; they seek Jesus and find Him in the Temple. Their question is spoken out of sorrow, and His answer is not yet understood. St. Luke allows both the finding and the incomprehension to stand.

You can finish the prayer before you have explained your own dryness. If there is a fault to confess, confess it. If you need counsel, seek it. For these seven Hail Marys, give your attention to Jesus being sought and found. Return to Him each time you discover that your thoughts have wandered.

Mother and Son on the road

Consider whom Mary sees: the Son she bore, tended, and sought, now going to His Crucifixion. The earlier Sorrows have led toward this road. Simeon’s prophecy is no longer a distant warning. Her love is directed toward the same Jesus whom she received in joy.

The chaplet does not give their words to one another. Let the meeting remain quiet. Adore Our Lord as He goes to His Passion, and ask His Mother to pray for you. If you bring someone else’s suffering to this group, place that person before Him without losing sight of the mystery itself.

At a friend’s door

He has been meaning to visit since the funeral. Each day he postpones it. He cannot think what to say to a man whose wife has died, and he fears the silence that might follow his greeting.

The Fourth Sorrow gives him a meeting to contemplate. The chaplet places Mary before her Son on the road to Calvary. It supplies no conversation for him to memorize. He can attend to the love of Mother and Son without filling the scene with words.

When he calls his friend, he can ask whether a visit would be welcome. Once there, he may hear the same memory more than once. He may sit for a while without speaking. His friend has lost someone irreplaceable. The visitor’s task is smaller: to come, to listen, and to remember to come again.

Beside the Cross of Jesus

St. John names the Mother of Jesus among those standing at His Cross. He records Our Lord’s words to her and to the beloved disciple. Even in His Passion, Jesus speaks and gives. The disciple receives His Mother into his own care.

Remain first with Jesus Himself. His Crucifixion is the saving Passion of Our Lord, worthy of adoration and thanksgiving. Mary’s sorrow brings us near to the One who is dying. Her presence keeps the scene personal: this is her Son.

The Act of Contrition with which the chaplet began can now be recalled in a few words: “O Saviour, my sole and only love!” Ask for a deeper hatred of sin and a grateful love of Him. If repentance requires a change in your conduct, let the purpose be sincere. The mercy you seek is the mercy of Jesus crucified.

The correction you owe

You told the story in a way that made your relative look worse. A detail was exaggerated; something that would have explained her conduct was left out. The listeners agreed with you, and their agreement made it harder to admit what you had done.

Now the Act of Contrition asks for a purpose of amendment. At the Fifth Sorrow, the words have a particular claim upon you. Before Jesus crucified, bring the wrong itself into view, including the satisfaction you took in being believed.

An apology to your relative may be necessary. So may a correction to the people who heard you. Neither requires another account of her faults. Ask for the humility to say plainly what was untrue, and bring the sin honestly to confession.

The Son she once held as a Child

The Pietà places the dead Christ in His Mother’s arms. It recalls, by a sorrowful resemblance, the Child she once held. The body received at the end of His earthly life is the body of the Son she bore.

Attend to the reverence of the scene. Human hands receive and tend the body of Our Lord. Love still has work to do after His death. As you pray, ask for tenderness toward the dying and reverence toward the dead. Remember those whose care is carried out quietly, when few people are present to notice it.

The familiar task

A daughter washes her elderly father’s hands. It is a task she has done many times. Today she is tired, and there are messages waiting on her phone. He begins a story she has heard before.

The Sixth Sorrow may return to her in this ordinary work: the body of Jesus taken down from the Cross, and the traditional contemplation of His Mother receiving Him. Care is personal. The hands she washes belong to her father, who once held hers.

She can slow down enough to hear him. Later she may need someone to take her place so that she can rest. For now, there is water to change, a towel to bring, and a person before her. Reverence can inhabit these familiar movements.

The body laid in the sepulchre

St. John gives us a garden and a new sepulchre near the place of Crucifixion. There they lay Jesus. Contemplate His Mother’s sorrow as His body is laid in the tomb.

Allow the burial its place in your prayer. Our Lord truly died and was buried. The Christian who contemplates this mystery believes in His Resurrection, but does not have to pass over the tomb as though death and separation were slight things.

Pray for the dead and for those who mourn them. We commend particular souls to God’s mercy rather than claiming knowledge of their eternal state. At the end of the seven Sorrows, the closing prayer asks Our Lord for mercy now and at the hour of our death. Let the meditation prepare you to make that petition with trust.

When the house grows quiet

The visitors have gone home. The flowers are fading. A widow finds that the hours once occupied by caring for her husband now seem very long. Other people have returned to their routines; she is learning a house altered by his absence.

The Seventh Sorrow gives those who love her a reason to remember after the funeral week. Jesus is laid in the sepulchre. The chaplet asks us to contemplate His Mother’s sorrow at that burial. We need not hurry this mystery toward a lesson that will make bereavement easy.

Pray for the man who has died. Remember his wife when the first offers of help have ceased. Write his anniversary down. A letter months later, using his name and recalling something good about him, may be a kindness that she keeps.