Tuesday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Our Lady of Sorrows

Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 2: 33-40
Mass: Heb 5:7-9 or 1 Cor 12-14, 27-31a; Resp Ps 31 or Resp Ps 100; Jn 19:25-27 or Lk 2:33-35

Oh, how sad and sore distressed Was that Mother highly blessed Of the sole begotten One!

MARY, MOTHER OF COMPASSION,

PRAY FOR US.

The following poem by Christian de Cherge (1937-1996), Trappist monk, Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas, Tibhirine, Algeria, Martyr of Algeria along with eighteen others. 

MARY’S  COMPASSION

You will always be torn apart, for the sword is sharp

Piercing your son’s side, your mother’s soul.

As long as there is pain to share

You will be its companion in the night

Amid the doubts, the waiting, the tears.

Dawn will come for others but not for you

As long as there is still a comatose child,

Grieving parents or a bedside

Where time stands still with love.

You are the eternal woman

Eyes worn out by weeping

Exposed to every passion

Yet giving all compassion.

For you it rains even on the highway of the sun

 For you are the blind walker on the roadside

Splattered by mud from the passing cars.

You must cross the road quickly so as to not

To be run over by life’s reckless drivers.

All you can see is the dying man

Lying on the other side of the highway

Winding down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

If they ask you what you are doing that for,

You take your child who died on the cross,

Open your arms like a living tomb

And press him against your bosom,

Where he can rest, awake, and live again

In the heart of your womb.

For the hour of labor has arrived

Oh Mother of Sorrow!

You must give birth anew since you have said Yes,

You who never cease to bring into the Father’s world

The immense, suffering body of his first-born Son.

You have said Yes and that is your joy

Leaping up within you

Poured over the world as your Magnificent.

  

But now is the hour of darkness.

You must still taste ingratitude, hate, solitude,

And your children must pass through this too

So that your first yes, the mother of all words,

Which remains as the earth passes away, can be consummated.

In your case the Beatitude are not fulfilled

Before the end of the ages

For this is what has been decreed:

You are to carry all generations within you

From Nazareth to Golgotha

Until the day of eternal birth when

All shall rise and proclaim you

BLESSED!

Today's photo: Sorrowful Mother, detail. Through the hand of Sister Suzanne.

© Gertrude Feick 2020