Our Lady of Sorrows

On September 15, the day after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Church keeps the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows — the Mother standing beside the Cross, her own soul pierced as Simeon had prophesied when she presented her Son in the Temple: "a sword shall pierce your own soul too" (Luke 2:35). The pairing is deliberate: the Church places the Mother beside the Cross on the day after it lifts the Cross up for veneration.

The devotion draws together the Seven Sorrows of Mary: the Prophecy of Simeon; the Flight into Egypt; the Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple; Mary meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary; the Crucifixion; the Body taken down from the Cross; and the Burial. The Servite Order, founded in Florence in 1233 by the Seven Holy Founders, spread the devotion through the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows — the Servite Rosary of seven decades. A Servite feast of the Compassion of Mary was granted in 1423; Benedict XIII extended it to the universal Church in 1727; and Pius X transferred it to September 15 in 1913, fixing the Mother beside the Cross.

The sequence of the feast is the Stabat Mater — the 13th-century Latin hymn traditionally attributed to Jacopone da Todi, the Franciscan poet: Stabat Mater dolorosa / iuxta crucem lacrimosa / dum pendebat Filius — "The sorrowful Mother stood weeping beside the Cross while her Son hung there." It is sung at the feast's Mass and at the Good Friday Stations of the Cross throughout the Church.

The great Mater Dolorosa shrine of France is La Salette, where the Virgin appeared weeping on September 19, 1846 — four days after this feast. The apparition did not name itself "Our Lady of Sorrows," but the weeping Mary of La Salette is iconographically a Mater Dolorosa, and the calendar closeness has always been devotionally noted. In Rome, the Servite mother church of San Marcello al Corso holds the ancient icon of Maria Santissima Addolorata. Maria Taferl and Maria Dreieichen in Austria are Mater Dolorosa shrines of national standing. In southern Italy and Spain, the September 15 memorial reprises the Good Friday processions of the Addolorata — the desolate Mary searching for her Son — that are the most widespread local tradition of the devotion.