Our Lady of Sorrows: Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix
Summary of Headings
- The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows
- Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix
- Uniting Our Sufferings with Christ
- The Role of Suffering in Redemption
- Our Lady's Example of Fiat
The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows
So on Tuesday we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. And it's easy for us, and still very beautiful of us, to reduce this feast and this devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows to its simplest and most obvious aspect, which is we see our mother suffering and we want her to stop suffering. We see the pain that she is in because she suffers. Seeing her suffering. Seeing her son suffer. She sees the pains of her son and she suffers seeing that pain. And we, her faithful children, would like her to not be in pain. We suffer alongside her and we desire to relieve her suffering.
And so therefore we try to make reparation for the sins that have caused this suffering.
Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix
First of all our own sins, but then the sins of the world as well. This is a very laudable, very commendable and important way to look at the feast day. But it would be unjust to limit it. It would be unjust to just that aspect. It is something that is very important. Now the Society of St. Pius X, which is dedicated and consecrated to the priesthood, has chosen Our Lady of Sorrows as our particular patroness. The title of Our Lady that we hold in special regard. Why is that? Because our Lord, the priest, is most closely united to Our Lady, as shall we say, as Our Lady of Sorrows.
Our Lady in all forms and formats because she is the Mother of God, she is the Mother of God. She is the Mother of the priest. But also in a very particular way because the action that is particular to the priest is the Mass. It is the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the action therefore that Our Lady is closest to for us is therefore the Mass as well. The sacrifice of our Lord. And therefore Our Lady at the foot of the cross. Our Lady of Sorrows. When we look upon her, obviously we are moved with emotion and with a desire to ease her suffering. But it is also important to understand that she is standing there not just as a monument of her suffering and pain, not just as an invitation and a reclamation against our own sinfulness, but it is also an invitation for us.
It is a guidepost for us to show us how it is we are supposed to live our lives, how we are supposed to consecrate and dedicate our lives. Our Lady of Sorrows is perfectly united to the sacrifice of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. So perfectly that she actually is given the title co -redemptrix. Because the redemptive act is our Lord on the cross. The redemptive act is our Lord on the altar and the Mass. This is how redemption is effected. Through original sin we are cut off. We are entirely cut off from the cross. We are cut off from heaven. Heaven is reopened by the cross, by the sacrifice of our Lord.
And she, through her sufferings and through, more importantly, her unification of her sufferings and of herself to the will of the Father with our Lord Jesus Christ in his sacrifice is a part of that redemption. She is an essential part of that redemption because it is by her that our Lord was able to come to the cross. He was able to come into the world to be able to die on the cross. She is the way by which he comes to us. So therefore she is the co -redemptrix. She is a part of it. She is the mediator of all graces because all grace came to this earth after original sin by the cross.
Uniting Our Sufferings with Christ
And she is the one who gave our Lord to us to suffer and die on the cross. But more than that, she is also the person who is most closely, most perfectly united to our Lord Jesus Christ. On the cross. Her entire being was united perfectly to the will of God no matter what. She didn't add any conditions. She didn't ask for any exceptions. She accepted fully and entirely. When we look upon Our Lady of Sorrows, we must also see that we are supposed to be invited by her to follow her example. We are supposed to be a part of the same unity with our Lord Jesus Christ in his sacrifice.
We must bind our will to his, which means losing ourselves in him. Our entire self must disappear into the will of God. And all of our life must become a part of the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sacrifice of Christ. Our lives must be united. Perfectly united to God. To the sacrifice of Christ. No matter what. Now this isn't easy for us to do because we are human and therefore we get stuck in our own little issues. And we waste all the glorious opportunities that God gives us to be able to join ourselves to him. And we waste the example of our Blessed Mother, by not focusing on her.
Not understanding what she is offering us and what she is trying to instruct us. But rather we become too overly focused on other things. Just as an example. If we suffer, and our sufferings could be very, very small or truly enormous. Our sufferings are not natural. They're not supposed to be how we are supposed to live our lives, according to the original plan of God of how things were in the Garden of Eden. But thanks to original sin, this is what our lot in life is. We are going to suffer. And it's not a bad thing. It is not normal according to what it should have been.
But it is not a bad thing in and of itself. Because it can be used for good. It is something that jars against our nature. Because again, we were supposed to be created in another way. Or for another end. But, by the way, we are not created for another end. By the grace of original sin, that is no longer the case. But, by the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, we now have context. We can put some context into our suffering. So now our suffering is not meaningless. Unless we make it so. So whatever our suffering may be, let's all try to think of just one suffering that really bothers us.
It could be something just as small as ... our neighbor playing his stereo really loudly at night. Or it could be chronic intense pain. Or it could be suffering persecution. We can go through the long list of our life and we can find some suffering that we really, that really seems to bother us. And then we can consider how it is that we respond to that suffering. To that cross. To that discomfort. And then to try to understand just how we should be handling that, let's look at Our Lady of Sorrows. More intense pain there has never been. More intense internal pain.
The only comparison is that of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And she was totally innocent of any sin. She didn't have to suffer, but she united herself to our Lord Jesus Christ who Himself accepted suffering, because it would help us. When we look upon her and how she suffers, she's not, she is showing us how we are supposed to suffer. Our pain, our suffering is something that could be good and fruitful just as hers was. But only in so far as it is united to the cross and to the Mass. Only in so far as all of that is united to the cross and to the Mass and then it becomes fruitful and then it becomes something that can actually save souls.
Our own first, but also that of others. It opens the doors to grace like she did. It gives us access to grace like she does. But we have to bind our sufferings to the altar just like she does. We have to unite our sufferings just like she does to the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ to her Son.
The Role of Suffering in Redemption
She teaches us how. She instructs us in how we are supposed to do this. She reveals it to us. But unfortunately, oftentimes we let the suffering or the discomfort or the frustration, overwhelm us to the point that we start complaining. Or we start to get frustrated. Or we let the frustration overwhelm us and we start to express ourselves as being frustrated. Leaning on the horn in the car or the like. Or banging on the window of the person who is annoying us with their stereo sound. Or just complaining about the pain that we are in. It is crucial that we understand how we are supposed to accept the sufferings that are out of our control.
And who is supposed to guide us in how we are supposed to accept that. And that is Our Lady. But also it would be an injustice to her if we were to just simply reduce everything to pain and to suffering and to offering things up. On the contrary. Because Our Lady of Sorrows is the most important thing. The most amazing example of what an entire life must be. Because we should remember that her seven sorrows didn't just all happen at the cross. They started with the very beginning of the life of our Lord. With the prophecy of Simeon. Throughout his entire life, she was suffering these sorrows.
And then when he finally was risen from the dead and he was ascended into heaven, then she had to suffer the lack of his presence again. The physical presence of her son. She continually suffers and she continually offers. Therefore, for us, that is a map. That is a guide of how we are supposed to live our lives. How is it that Our Lady was given so much power? How is it that she was given such unbelievable access to grace? That she is called the Mediatrix of all graces? Well, St. Alphonsus explains to us, by explaining it, that it is by her title, the Mother of God.
By the mere fact that she is the Mother of God, she was given all graces. This is why she was conceived without original sin. So that she could be the Mother of God. But she wouldn't have been the Mother of God without one simple word in Latin, which exemplifies the entirety of her life and which gives us the guideline for every part of ours. The word, fiat. Let it be done to me according to thy word. When the angel Gabriel came to Our Lady and announced to her the good news that she was invited to become the Mother of God, her response was, let it be done to me according to thy word.
St. Alphonsus also says that at that moment she was given a clear vision of all the things she was going to suffer. She was given a brief pre -taste, if you want to call it that, a pregustatio, of all the suffering and all the sacrifice she was going to have to go through. And her response was still, let it be done to me according to thy word. Her fiat throughout her life, first that one, then the next one where she tells the stewards, whatever he tells you to do, do it. She sends her son on his path to Calvary. Then at the foot of the cross, when Our Lord gives her away, as it were to St. John, and therefore to all of us, again in silence, she accepts all of us, let it be done to her according to His word.
And that is how we must now live our lives. That word, fiat, let it be done, must become the motto of our entire existence. Every morning, this is why we have the morning offering. How often do we just kind of breeze through it so that we can get on with the rest of our day? Or how often do we not even say it? But the morning offering is that. It is uniting our entire life and every aspect of our life to the sacrifice of the cross in the Mass. And yet, we don't even understand what that means. Look at Our Lady of Sorrows, and we know what it means. We understand what it means.
Every joy, every trial, every suffering, every pain, every obligation and duty, every word and work, every thought and intention, every facet of our lives now needs to be bound together and to be perfectly united to the sacrifice of Calvary, to the sacrifice of the Mass. Because it is the only way that it will have any merit toward our salvation. It is a constant battle for us to rip it free of ourselves and our own self -interest and our own self -pity and our own self -concern. And give it entirely, fully and trustingly over to Our Lady so that she can bind it to the Mass. So that she can bind it to the sacrifice of the cross with her Son and with her own heart.
This is how we are supposed to live our lives because this is how she lives her life. There was not an instant where her will was not binding itself more closely to the will of God. While we're not her, we're not that perfect. It's not going to be, shall we say, as easy for us in that way. This is still the effort we have to put in day after day, hour after hour, every breath, every inch, every instant of our lives. We must be struggling to dedicate and consecrate our entire existence to God in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by the power, example and guidance of Our Lady herself.
This is the war, the only war that is really essential for us to consider. This is the battle that we must fight each day. And this is the only thing that matters. Everything else has nothing to do with it. But this is how we achieve everything. Our Lady, because she was so perfectly united to the cross of her Son, to the will of her Son, because she was so perfectly given over to her Son and to his sacrifice, is now given the titles of co -redemptrix and mediatrix of all graces. She is given all power over all of our souls. She is the most powerful instrument that God has given us in the form of a person.
She is our most powerful advocate. She is our best teacher. She is the one who loves us best. She is the one who will never give up on us. She is the one who will fight side by side with us. She will never be afraid to get herself dirty, so in between quotes, by the way, to pull us out of the muck, to pull us out of the filth we get ourselves into. There is nothing she wouldn't give to strengthen us so that we can stand on our own two feet, even if it means we try to run away from her from time to time. She will continually give us everything we need to be able to bind ourselves, to the will of the Father, through the sacrifice of the Son, so that she can be our Queen eternally in heaven.
Ave Maria Purissima.
Our Lady's Example of Fiat
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Summary
The homily begins with a reflection on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, emphasizing the deep connection between her sufferings and those of her Son, Jesus Christ. It highlights the importance of not limiting our understanding of this feast to just her pain but recognizing her role as a guide for our spiritual lives. Our Lady of Sorrows is presented as Co-Redemptrix, intimately united with Christ's redemptive act on the cross. Her sufferings, perfectly aligned with the will of God, serve as a model for us to unite our own sufferings with Christ, transforming them into a source of grace. The homily concludes by urging us to adopt Our Lady's fiat, 'Let it be done to me according to thy word,' as a guiding principle in our lives. By doing so, we can fully unite our lives with the sacrifice of the Mass, drawing strength and grace from Our Lady's example.