Recommendation to Reflect upon Mary's Life and Heartfelt Sorrows
Timothy Duff, STM, BCC
Good News! Our Sunday prayers are already bearing fruit. I'm traveling to Washington DC this week so I will not get a start on the Seven Sorrows blogs for a little bit. On August 26th, the Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of the diocese of Arlington, VA will be offering a Mass to support those with mental illness and their families and friends. They have asked to use MMOMI (our Icon of the Merciful Mother of the mentally ill) for the cover of their program. I still plan to be on Zoom on Sunday with you. Please tell others about it or bring a friend to pray the chaplet to MMOMI.
When I grew up we would go to our Church on Friday's during the Lenton season and say the stations of the Cross. In my current area where I live that devotion has seemed to be almost be gone which is very sad. However, we still practice that at home. Do you know it? I plan to do it on Zoom this year during the Lenten Fridays but why wait? Since we are meditating on the Sorrows of Mary to console her heart and to assist us in supporting those with mental illness, you can download a copy from our home page.
I remember those words of that great Marian saint: St. Alphonsus De Ligouri in the Latin Hymn:
Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi.
Quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum.
Translates to:
We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee.
Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.
God Bless!
Tim Duff
THE VIRGIN MARY ERECTS THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
AT HER HOME IN EPHESUS
Reflections from In the Life and Revelations of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, one of the Church’s modern mystics and visionaries
“Behind the house, at a little distance up the hill, the Blessed Virgin had made a kind of Way of the Cross. When she was living in Jerusalem, she had never failed, ever since Our Lord’s death, to follow His path to Calvary with tears of compassion. She had paced out and measured all the distances between the Stations of that Via Crucis, and her love for her Son made her unable to live without this constant contemplation of His sufferings.
Soon after her arrival at her new home [in Ephesus] I saw her every day climbing part of the way up the hill behind her house to carry out this devotion. At first, she went by herself, measuring the number of steps, so often counted by her, which separated the places of Our Lord’s different sufferings.
At each of these places she put up a stone, or, if there was already a tree there, she made a mark upon it. The way led into a wood, and upon a hill in this wood, she had marked the place of Calvary, and the grave of Christ in a little cave in another hill. After she had marked this Way of the Cross with twelve Stations, she went there with her maidservant in quiet meditation: at each Station they sat down and renewed the mystery of its significance in their hearts, praising the Lord for His love with tears of compassion.
source: https://www.catholiccompany.com/getfed/virgin-mary-way-of-the-cross