REFLECTION:

When I was young, I always remember my mother saying something to us children: “I can tell when one of you is hurt or when something is going on. I can feel it in my heart. I lose sleep, and my prayer intensifies.”

As a kid, I used to wonder, “How does she know?” Sometimes you try to hide something from your mother. You walk into the house and say, “I’m fine!” And somehow she looks at you and says, “No, you’re not.” Mothers have that strange gift. You can be miles away, and somehow Mom knows something is wrong.

Today, on the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, I think about those words of my mother because they help us understand Mary.

In the Gospel, Simeon looks at Mary and tells her, “You yourself a sword will pierce.” Mary would not physically experience the nails driven into the hands and feet of Jesus. She would not wear the crown of thorns. She would not be scourged. And yet, because this was her Son, His suffering became her suffering. What pierced the Body of Jesus also pierced the heart of His mother.

That is what love does.

And that is why our first reading from St. Paul fits so beautifully today. Paul tells us that although the body has many parts, it is still one body. Then he says, “You are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.”

If we really are one Body in Christ, then what my mother said about her children should also be true of us: when one part of the Body hurts, somehow the rest of the Body should feel it.

When someone in our family is struggling, we should feel it. When someone in our parish community is grieving, we should care. When a student is hurting, when a teacher is overwhelmed, when a coworker is carrying something heavy, their pain should not simply be “their problem.” We belong to one another because we belong to Christ.

Mary teaches us what that looks like. At the Cross, she could not stop what was happening to Jesus. She could not take away His pain. She could not fix the situation. But she stayed.

Sometimes that is the greatest gift we can give someone who is suffering. We don't always need to have the right words. We don't always need to solve the problem. Sometimes we simply need to be there, to pray a little harder, to listen a little more carefully, and maybe even to lose a little sleep because someone we love is hurting.

My mother would say, “When my children hurt, I feel it in my heart.”

Today, Our Lady of Sorrows teaches us something similar: when someone in the Body of Christ hurts, a Christian heart should feel it too.

May Mary give us hearts like hers—hearts so united to Jesus and to one another that we do not walk away from suffering, but have the courage simply to stand beside one another at the foot of the Cross.