Sword of Grief

'The Man of Sorrows in the Arms of the Virgin', c.1475-1479, Hans Memling (c.1433-1494), National Gallery of Victoria

Today is the memorial of Our Lady of the Sorrows, also known in the liturgy of Ordinariate as Saint Mary at the Cross.

‘Behold thy mother!... Behold thy son! No evangelist records this saying except St John, the disciple whom JESUS loved. The others tell, indeed, of the company of weeping women, faithful to the last, who watched by the Cross. But the presence of the mother of JESUS was unmarked except by the friend to whose care she was commended in the loving words which escaped the notice of the rest. Little is told about the Blessed Virgin in the Gospels; she is but the highly favoured handmaid of the Lord. But enough is told to assure us, what indeed we would readily believe, even if we were not told, that the tie between mother and Son was a perfect pattern of that most sacred relationship. From the beginning, she kept in her heart all that was said of her wondrous Son, she had a premonition that all generations would call her Blessed. Yet she had heard, in the days of His tender infancy, that because of Him the sword of grief would pierce her heart. And so now it had to come to pass. She saw Him brought to the Cross. But His love took thought for her future even in His last pains. He commended her to His best earthly friend, to the disciple who had drunk most deeply of His spirit. And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home’.

from Verba Crucis: Good Friday Addresses, 1915
​by John Henry Bernard, 1860-1927 (Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, 1915-1919)

O Lord, in whose Passion, according to the word of Simeon, the sword of sorrow didst pierce the most sweet soul of the glorious Virgin and Mother Mary: graciously grant that we, who devoutly call to mind her sorrows, may obtain the blessed effects of thy Passion; who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - ​Divine Worship: The Missal.