Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012
Seven Dolours of Mary, March 30, 2012
Today we begin Holy Week, but before we concentrate on our Lord’s Passion I want to say a few words about the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, which was this past Friday. On that day the Church directed Her devotion to the special sorrow of Mary standing at the foot of the Cross of Jesus. Three times Mary was called on to take part in what God Himself did for the Redemption of Man. The first was the Incarnation where Jesus would not take flesh in her womb until she consented to become His mother. The second time was at the foot of the Cross where she stood to take part in the expiatory sacrifice in atonement for the sins of all of us, and the third was on Pentecost where she, along with the Apostles, received the Holy Ghost in order that she also might effectively labor to establish our Lord’s Church that He promised to build upon the rock of Peter.
When the Christ Child was presented at the temple, Simeon told Mary, “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thought may be revealed.” (Luke 2: 35) From then until the arrest of Jesus, Mary carried these words in her heart. She suffered through her Son’s arrest, being beaten up and scourged. She followed Him to Calvary as He carried His Cross. Modernists deny this but if there ever was a valiant woman, such as described in Proverbs 31: 10-31, it was Mary, and we are sure that in her strength and love she was with Jesus throughout His suffering. Each hammer blow that drove the nails through her Son’s hands and feet was like a sword piercing her heart.
We must ask why God asked Mary to be there and to suffer through the death of Jesus. Why did He not take her sooner like he took Joseph? As God would not give Jesus to her until she said yes, He would not take Him away from her unless she gave Him back. “It was not God’s justice that took him from her,” Dom Guéranger writes, “it is she herself that gives Him up. But, in return, she is raised to a degree of greatness, which her humility could never have suspected was to be hers: an ineffable union is made to exist between the two offerings, that of the Incarnate Word, and that of Mary; the Blood of the divine Victim, and the tears of the Mother, flowing together for the redemption of mankind.” St. Ambrose said Mary stood at the foot of the cross “not waiting for her Jesus to die, but [waiting] for the world to be saved.”
Dom Guéranger helps us to understand more fully when he wrote: Thus this Mother of Sorrows, standing at the foot of the Cross, blessed us who did not deserve it. She sacrificed her Son for our salvation. In spite of all the love in her heart for her Son, Jesus, she gave back to God the Father the Eternal Treasure he had given her for safekeeping. The sword pierced through her soul, but we were saved, and she, a mere human, cooperated with the Son of God in the work of our salvation. We needn’t wonder this is the moment Jesus chose to make Mary the Mother of all of us in the person of the Apostle John. When the sword pierced her heart we gained admission to it. Now, and through eternity, Mary will extend to us the love she has for her Son because she just heard Him say that we are her children.
The Prophet Zacharias, 500 years before the Lord's day, foretold today's triumphal entrance into Jerusalem by the Messiah: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion! Shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold thy King will come to thee; the Just and the Savior. He is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.” (Zacharias 9: 9) The streets of Jerusalem echoed with the voices of children singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” The Roman soldiers stood by, silent under the banner of their Imperial Eagle. The scribes and Pharisees stood by in silent rage.
The ass he led behind Him represented the Jewish nation, which had been long under the yoke of the Law. The colt, upon which no man had yet sat, represents the Gentile world. The future of these two people will be decided in a few days – the Jewish nation, under their title as the Chosen People, will be rejected for refusing to acknowledge the Messiah, and the Redemption brought by Jesus will then be offered to all peoples, Jew and Gentile alike.
In our Lord's day the state of the Jew's religion under the scribes and Pharisees was corrupt, much like the Catholic Church is corrupted today by the Modernist heresy. In our Lord's day many thousands of Jews came to know, to understand, to love and to accept Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Over the centuries probably millions of Jews have come to know Him.
Today also the remnant of those holding fast to Christ’s True Faith is growing. These pray with Psalm 118, v. 66: “Teach me goodness, and discipline, and knowledge; for I have believed thy commandments.” And with Verses 3-8: “For they that work iniquity, have not walked in his ways. Thou hast commanded thy commandments to be kept most diligently. O! That my ways may be directed to keep thy justifications. Then shall I not be confounded, when I shall look into all thy commandments. I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned the judgments of thy justice. I will keep thy justifications: O! do not thou utterly forsake me.”
When He was born Three Kings came to adore Him because they knew Him. These were the Gentiles, the Magi. On the first Palm Sunday, under the prompting of the Holy Ghost, thousands of Jews turned out to welcome their King. Even the Roman Procurator, Pilate, recognized Jesus in a way, when he had nailed to the cross a placard reading, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
Maintain the Lenten fast for six more days. You will be glad you did. +++
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