One Minute Reflection – 15 September – “The Month of The Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary and The Holy Cross” and The Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin – Our Lady of Sorrows – Judith 13:22; 13:25, John 19:25-27 – Scripture search here:
“Behold, thy mother” – John 19:27
REFLECTION – “Woman, this is thy son. This is thy mother.” By what right is the disciple. whom Jesus loved, the son of the Lord’s mother? By what right is she his mother? By the fact that, without pain, she brought into the world the salvation of us all, when she gave birth in the flesh to the God-Man. But now, she is in labour, with great pain as she stands at the foot of the Cross!
At the hour of His Passion, the Lord Himself rightly compared the Apostles to a woman in childbirth, when He said: “When a woman is in labour she is in anguish because a child is born into the world” (cf Jn 16:21). How much more, then, might such a Son compare such a Mother, the Mother standing at the foot of His Cross, to a woman in labour? What am I saying? “Compare?” She is indeed truly a woman and truly a mother and, at this hour, she is truly experiencing the pains of childbirth. When her Son was born she did not experience the anguish of giving birth in pain as other women do; it is now that she is suffering, that she is crucified, that she experiences sorrow; like a woman in labour because her hour has come ( Jn 16:21; cf 13:1; 17:1). …
When this hour has passed, when the sword of sorrow has completely pierced her soul in labour (Lk 2:35), then, no more will she “remember the pain because a child has been born into the world” – the new Man Who renews the entire human race and reigns forever over the whole world, truly born, beyond all suffering, immortal, the Firstborn from the Dead. If the Virgin has thus brought the salvation of us all into the world, in her Son’s Passion, then she is, indeed, the Mother of us all!” – Rupert of Deutz (c1075-1130) Benedictine Monk, Theologian, Exegete and Writer – (Commentary on Saint Johns Gospel, 13).
PRAYER – O God, in Whose Passion the sword, according to the prophecy of blessed Simeon, pierced through the soul of Mary, the glorious Virgin and Mother, mercifully grant that we, who reverently commemorate her piercing through and her suffering, may, by the interceding glorious merits of all the Saints faithfully standing by the Cross, obtain the abundant fruit of Thine Passion. Who lives and reigns with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen (Collect).
AnaStpaul 