The Seven Sorrows of Mary: the Mother’s way

IWhat are the seven sorrows of Mary?

The Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001) puts it simply: since the childhood of Christ, Mary’s life was lived under the sign of the sword, and Christian piety has singled out seven particular incidents of sorrow in her life. They run from the Temple at Jerusalem to the tomb in the garden.

• The prophecy of Simeon. She hears, with her infant in an old man’s arms, that her Son will be contradicted and that a sword will pierce her own soul (Luke 2:34–35).
• The flight into Egypt. An angel wakes Joseph, and the family leaves by night because Herod “will seek the child to destroy him” (Matthew 2:13–14).
• The loss of the Child Jesus in Jerusalem. Three days of searching, and then her words: “behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” (Luke 2:43–48).
• Meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary. The Gospels do not describe this meeting. Luke records the women who followed Him, weeping (Luke 23:27); devotion places His Mother on that road.
• Standing at the foot of the Cross. “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother” (John 19:25), and from the Cross He gave her to the beloved disciple (John 19:26–27).
• Jesus taken down from the Cross. Scripture tells us Joseph of Arimathea took the body down (John 19:38). Christian devotion and art, in the Pietà, place it in her arms.
• The burial. They bound Him in linen with spices and laid Him in a new tomb in a garden nearby (John 19:40–42).

IIWhere the devotion comes from

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), the seven founders of the Servite Order (the Servants of Mary) took up the sorrows of Mary standing under the Cross as the principal devotion of their order in 1239. A feast of her Compassion was kept in parts of northern Europe from the fifteenth century, and by the end of that century some dioceses were already commemorating seven sorrows spread across her whole life.

In 1727 Benedict XIII extended a feast of the Seven Sorrows to the whole Latin Church on the Friday before Palm Sunday. A second feast, granted to the Servites in 1668 for the third Sunday of September, was extended to the Latin Church by Pius VII in 1814, after his return from exile in France. Today the Church keeps the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows on 15 September. The Directory, in its pages on Good Friday, also recommends that “the memorial of Our Lady of Dolours” be recalled on that day, because of its doctrinal and pastoral importance (no. 145). It also notes that a pious exercise called the Via Matris, the Mother’s Way, walks the seven sorrows as seven stations, and has been approved by the Apostolic See.

IIIWhy she stood: what the Church teaches

This devotion is not sentiment about a sad mother. It is about Mary’s share in the work of her Son. The Second Vatican Council describes her at Calvary in these words:

The Catechism (no. 618) teaches that Christ asks His disciples to carry their cross after Him, that He wants the first to benefit from His sacrifice to share in it, and that no one ever shared in His suffering as closely as His Mother. She did not stop the sword. She stood, and with a mother’s heart united herself to His sacrifice.

That is why mothers have always found their way to her. Each sorrow has a counterpart in a woman’s life: the word in a doctor’s office that changes everything; a move made in fear; a child lost, for three days or for years, to the world or to unbelief; a son or daughter carrying a cross you cannot lift; standing beside suffering you cannot fix; holding what death has left; and the grave itself. Mary has been in every one of those rooms. Jeremias’s lament could be her own: “O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12, Douay-Rheims).

IVHow to pray the Seven Sorrows chaplet

The Raccolta, the classic collection of indulgenced prayers (English edition, 1910), describes the chaplet, also called the Rosary of the Seven Dolours, like this: seven divisions in memory of Our Lady’s seven sorrows, meditating on each if we can, with one Our Father and seven Hail Marys at each, ending with three Hail Marys in honour of her tears. Its footnote records grants by popes from Benedict XIII (1724) to Leo XIII (1898).

• Begin with an act of contrition. The Raccolta gives a long one; the short Act of Contrition from the Baltimore Catechism, in our Prayer Book, will serve.
• Name the first sorrow and hold it in your mind for a moment. Pray one Our Father and seven Hail Marys.
• Do the same for each of the seven sorrows, in order.
• Pray three Hail Marys in honour of the tears Mary shed in her sorrows.
• Close with the versicle and prayer below. The Raccolta shortens the prayer’s ending to “etc.”; if you do not know the rest, simply end with Amen.
• Seven-part chaplet beads exist, but your fingers will do. Fridays and the days of Lent suit this devotion well.

VA shorter devotion: “I compassionate thee”

The Raccolta also gives a shorter devotion to the Sorrowful Heart of Mary: one Hail Mary for each sorrow, with a virtue and a gift of the Holy Ghost asked at each. I compassionate thee is old English for I share thy sorrow. Where the text says Ave Maria, pray one Hail Mary; Glory be, etc. means the whole Glory Be.

VIFor the hardest days: seven Hail Marys

When you cannot hold seven meditations in your head, the Raccolta offers something smaller: seven Hail Marys, with this stanza of the Stabat Mater after each. The hymn itself is old and its author uncertain; the Catholic Encyclopedia weighs the claims of Innocent III and Jacopone da Todi and settles on neither.

If you are carrying one of these sorrows now, the Mater Dolorosa companion is built for exactly that, and what you keep in it stays on your own device unless you choose to sync. The Novenas tool can walk you to 15 September with Our Lady of Sorrows, and the Rosary’s sorrowful mysteries keep you near the same Cross.