# Seven Lessons About Love: The Seven Sorrows of Mary

An episode of [St. Josemaria Institute Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/966458405), 15 Sep 2026, 31 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1862514/episodes/19672438-seven-lessons-about-love-the-seven-sorrows-of-mary.mp3

In this meditation, we invite you to pray alongside Msgr. Martin Schlag and, following the advice of St. Josemaria, repeat his heartfelt petitions to Mary under the invocation of Our Lady of Sorrows. By contemplating Mary's heart, we can learn to: • let God strengthen my faith when I find myself at the foot of the Cross; • pronounce a 'fiat' to God when He is asking something of me that's not what I want; • stand loyally by the side of Christ when I feel lonely, abandoned, or just plain tired. Speaking about the heart of Mary, Msgr. Schlag leads us in meditation on Scripture, through a personal examination, and into contemplation by speaking directly to our Blessed Mother. He explains: "The sword pierces a heart that loves Jesus, and in Jesus, loves all of us. So, Saint Josemaria goes so far as to connect Mary's sorrow with these words of Jesus: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Mary's suffering is not pointless or sterile. She suffers with Christ and for souls—for us—and is united with the redemptive love of her Son. PAUSE & REFLECT: • How do I receive suffering? Am I afraid of pain? • What barriers in my life prevent me from accepting the cross with faith? • How can my suffering lead me into to a deeper love of God? THANK YOU FOR LISTENING! If you enjoyed this meditation, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your feedback is important to us, and each rating and review helps expand our reach to more listeners! Support the show

## Transcript

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence; I beg your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel: intercede for me.
Throughout the liturgical year, the Church celebrates the privileges and glories of Mary, and we can go through the liturgical year in our mind. We start with the divine motherhood of Mary, a unique privilege and the source of all her graces. In August, we celebrate the Assumption of Mary with body and soul into heaven, and then her Queenship. And in December we have her Immaculate Conception. These are all solemnities and great celebrations in the Church. And besides there are many feasts and memorials of Mary, some under special invocations, like, for instance, Our Lady of Guadalupe. So, these glories can make Mary seem far from our daily experience. However, when we can think of what Mary did or achieved that could have won her such renown, such glory, we can ask, ‘what did she do in in her life?’ And we can realize that she cooked every day; she cleaned and she swept the floor. She served Jesus and Joseph. She fetched water from the well; of course, there was no running water anyway. She had to carry out the trash. She had to fetch the grain and then grind it and bake the bread, and she also had to do unpleasant things like carrying out the chamber pots. I don't think that the Holy Family had servants to do this. And finally at the end of everything, she underwent suffering, terrible suffering, seeing her beloved Son tortured and nailed to the cross and dying. And during her life experiencing the oppression of tyrants, of the Roman occupation, the humiliation of being a second-class citizen. And so, the Church dedicates one memorial to Our Lady of Sorrows.
Before the liturgical reform, Our Lady of Sorrows used to be celebrated on the Friday before Palm Sunday, and then it was moved to September 15th, the day after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It was a feast day that was especially dear to Saint Josemaria because it was also the namesake day of his mother, Maria Dolores, named after the sorrows or the ‘dolors’ of Mary. In Spain those namesake days were more important than the birthdays. So, it's a particularly fruitful theme in Saint Josemaria's writing, because he does not treat Mary's sorrow principally as an object of sentimental compassion. He writes in his book The Way of the Cross, “The saints, you tell me, would burst into tears of sorrow at the thought of the Passion of Our Lord, whereas I… Perhaps that is because you and I witness the scenes, but do not live them”. And so, we can apply that advice also to Mary, and this is what we try to do in today's meditation on the sorrows of Mary-- looking into Mary's heart, because this is the advice Saint Josemaria gives us. He said, “When you contemplate her, look into her heart; she is a Mother with two sons, face to face: He… and you.” (The Way, no. 506) So, look into her heart, look into Mary's heart.
So, Mother, in this time of prayer, let me enter your heart; let me understand something of what you lived, and above all, teach me to respond to Jesus as you responded.
The seven sorrows reveal Mary's heart because suffering reveals what we really love, and in Mary's suffering, we discover that her heart belongs entirely to Jesus. But Saint Josemaria adds something important: Mary has two sons, two children before her- Heand you! Therefore, we are not spectators. We want to be involved in these sorrows, and we are indeed involved in these sorrows because Mary's suffering has something to do with my sins and with my salvation, with my vocation, with my holiness. Saint Josemaria becomes very personal when he writes, “Mary's loneliness. Alone! She weeps forsakenly. You and I should keep our Lady company, and weep also, for Jesus has been fixed to the wood, with nails — our sins.” (The Way, no. 503)
So, Mother, I want to keep you company always, but especially today, on this memorial of your sorrows, and perhaps the seven swords can teach us three things, and on these I would like to meditate: to believe with Mary, number one; to say ‘yes’ with Mary, that would be the second lesson; and to stand with Mary beside the Cross.
So let us start, Mary, with your faith, I want to believe like you. And, we turn first to the temple, the temple where Mary and Joseph present Jesus, and the first ‘dolor’ (sorrow) is Simeon's prophecy that a sword will pierce through your own soul also. Simeon, this holy old man who has been waiting for such a long time for this moment, praying; and the Holy Spirit has told him that he has to go now, that the Savior is coming. He takes Jesus into his arms, and he makes this prophecy to Mary, something that a young mother really doesn't want to hear, and so it pierces her soul. And St. Josemaria comments on this scene in his book, Friends of God, and his first conclusion is that she teaches us to have charity. So, why charity? Well, because Mary's sorrow cannot be separated from her love. The sword pierces a heart that loves, that loves Jesus, and in Jesus loves all, all of us. So, Saint Josemaria goes so far as to connect Mary's sorrow with these words of Jesus: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”Mary's suffering is not pointless or sterile. She suffers with Christ and for souls, for us. She is united with the redemptive love of her Son. So, we can ask ourselves now, in God's presence, how do I receive suffering? Am I afraid of pain? Well, it's very normal to be afraid of pain. But how do I react after the first human reaction? Perhaps there is some little sword in my own life now. Maybe a disappointment, or someone who doesn't understand me, a difficulty in my work, an apostolic concern, or something in our family that is frustrating or painful, or tiredness, or just experiencing my own limitations.
So, Mary, Mother, I turn to you. Teach me not simply to endure it. Teach me to turn it into love.
Let's turn to the second ‘dolor’, the flight into Egypt. Mary has received extraordinary promises: the archangel Gabriel has told her that she would receive a son who would sit on the throne of David; angels sang at Bethlehem; shepherds adored him; wise men came from afar to do him homage and bring treasures. And suddenly Joseph has to say in the middle of the night we must leave; Herod wants to kill the child. So, what a contrast! And so, the Holy Family had to flee, writes Saint Josemaria. They had to flee to Egypt to escape Herod's murderous intent. And then silence. So, what has happened to God's promises? Mary does not understand everything, but she believes everything. Saint Josemaria suggests a way how we could imitate her: “Mary treasured up these events in her heart.” We too should talk to Our Lord about everything that happens to us, even apparently insignificant things, and learn to see them with the eyes of faith, so as to discover God's will. With the eyes of faith! How many things look different when we see them with Mary's eyes or with her spirit? Something that goes wrong, and suddenly I am in an existential desert. I feel dry, frustrated, lost because a plan has been changed, or a professional door closes, or we receive news we did not expect. We had prayed for something, and God seems to stay silent. And we can say with Mary, Mother, I do not understand this.
But, Mary, you did not understand everything either. Teach me to believe. Mary, teach me to believe.
And then, Mary's third sorrow: Jesus is lost in the temple. Saint Josemaria comments on this in his book The Holy Rosary and notice that he doesn't remain outside of the scene. He becomes a little child, accompanying Mary, asking, "Where is Jesus, the child, my lady? Where is he?” And Mary is crying, Joseph is crying, and Saint Josemaria begins to cry too, because suddenly the meditation turns toward his own soul: “I cry my eyes out to make up for those times when I lost him through my own fault and did not cry.” And then this beautiful resolution of his: “Jesus, may I never lose thee again.” So maybe we can now examine our conscience. Have I lost Jesus? And maybe there is a grave sin in my life that I haven't decidedly rejected, or maybe I need to reconcile with a brother or sister of mine. Or perhaps I'm neither aware of a mortal sin or of an offense to anyone, but I have allowed Jesus to disappear from the center of my day. Work can become an idol, a false god that kind of absorbs everything. Problems can suffocate the good seeds in my life, my good resolutions; my plans, my reputation, my anxieties crowd out my high ideals of serving God and others; and suddenly Jesus is somewhere lost, somewhere left behind. Mary searches for three days. How much do I search for Jesus?
Jesus, may I never lose you again. And if I do lose you, let me search for you immediately-- in confession, in prayer, in the Eucharist, in sincerity, in beginning again.
The first three sorrows therefore teach us faith: faith when the sword is foretold; faith when we must flee into Egypt, into the desert; and faith when Jesus seems to have been lost, when he seems to have disappeared from our life. So, holy Mary, Mother of God, teach me to believe.
Well, the second topic of our meditation on this day of the sorrows of Mary, or Our Lady of Sorrows, is to say ‘yes’ with Mary. The fourth ‘dolor’ is the encounter with Jesus carrying the cross on the way to Calvary to die. How many years have now passed? Mary sees Jesus again on a road, but this time he is carrying the cross. Saint Josemaria writes in the fourth station of The Way of the Cross: “With immense love, Mary looks at Jesus, and Jesus at his mother. Their eyes meet.” No long conversation is necessary; each knows what is in the other's heart. And Saint Josemaria says that Our Lady offers Jesus a “comforting balm of tenderness, of union, of faithfulness, a yes to the divine will.” A yes! This is the same woman who thirty-three years earlier heard the angel say, "You will conceive the Son of God,” and Mary says, "Be it done unto me according to Thy word.” At Nazareth, Mary said ‘yes’. Now she says yes again, but how different that yes must have felt for her. At Nazareth, she receives Jesus into her womb. On the road to Calvary, she accompanies Jesus toward death. And yet it is the same ‘fiat mihi’, ‘fiat mihi’-- “be it done to me according to your word”.
And that may be something very important for our own prayer today. It's relatively easy, as we all know, to say, "Thy will be done”, when God's will coincides with our hopes and expectations. But sooner or later, every Christian discovers another dimension of this ‘fiat’. And so, Lord, I now say yes, Lord, also, this-- this person, this contradiction, this failure, this illness in myself or in someone I love, this misunderstanding, this limitation of mine, this weakness that does not disappear-- in one word, this cross. St. Josemaria places us inside the scene, “Hand in hand with Mary. You and I also want to console Jesus, and how do we console him? By accepting always and in everything the will of His Father, of our Father.” That is an impactful idea. We sometimes wonder how could I have consoled Jesus during His Passion. Saint Josemaria answers, say ‘yes’ to God the Father now. My conformity with God's will today can console Jesus. My acceptance today, my cheerful fulfillment of duty, my willingness to begin again, my acceptance of the cross. Saint Josemaria turns to Mary, “My mother and lady, teach me how to pronounce a yes, which, like yours, will identify with the cry Jesus made before His Father, ‘non mea voluntas’-- not my will, but your will be done.” And so perhaps now we can repeat slowly, Mother, teach me to say yes, not just once in my life, or on important occasions, but again and again.
A vocation is a fiat, a yes, renewed every morning and many times during the day, with love and with rectitude of intention, because rectitude of intention, that is, loving God in everything we do, is not held once and for all. We need to correct many times during the day. Our fidelity is made of many small ‘fiats’, of many small saying ‘thy will be done”. And perhaps the greatest crosses of our life will be possible only because we have learned to say yes to the little crosses of every day.
And so, we turn to the third topic and third lesson. We can learn on today's memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows to stand with Mary. Jesus is crucified. Jesus is taken down from the cross. Jesus is placed in the tomb. These are the last three ‘dolors of Mary, and perhaps one Latin word can hold the three mysteries together-- ‘Stabat’. Saint John tells us, “Stabant autem juxta crucem Iesu mater eius” (Standing by the cross of Jesus was his mother). Saint Josemaria asks, What could Mary do? She could not take Jesus down; she could not stop the soldiers; she could not silence the insults; she could not remove his pain. So what does she do? She united herself fully with the redemptive love of her Son, and offered her sorrow to the Father. Mary does not shout; she does not runabout frantically. “‘Stabat’, she is there, standing next to her Son”, writes Saint Josemaria. So, she is there. Sometimes, sometimes, thank God, love can do something. Sometimes love can solve the problem. Sometimes love can heal, but sometimes love can only stay. Perhaps someone listening to this meditation, joining in prayer, has experienced that. That you would like to remove the suffering of someone you love, and you can't. Then Mary teaches us the apostolate of presence: Stabat, stay, pray, love, offer, do not run away. In a point in his booklet The Way, Saint Josemaria asks us to admire Mary's fortitude at the foot of the cross, and to ask her for strength that we too may learn to stand by the cross.
But something else happens at Calvary, as we know. Jesus looks at Mary from the cross in midst of his unspeakable suffering, and then at John. “Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother.” Remember where we began-- “The Virgin of Sorrows. When you contemplate her, look into her Heart; she is a Mother with two sons, face to face: He… and you.” (The Way, no. 506) And precisely the moment when Mary is losing Jesus, Jesus gives us to her. In the beloved Apostle John, Christ entrusts mankind, and especially all his disciples to his mother.
So, we can say to Mary: Mother, I know that I am a very poor substitute for Jesus, but He gave me to you. I am your son. I am your daughter. Teach me to behave like one.
Then Jesus is taken down from the cross, the sixth ‘dolor’. Saint Josemaria writes in the 13th station of the Stations of the Cross, “Mary's grief is renewed”, and then “the Blessed Virgin is our mother, and we do not wish, we cannot leave her alone.” What a beautiful resolution at the end of our meditation! Do not leave Mary alone. Stay with her. The dead body of Christ is in her arms. Humanly, everything looks like failure. And elsewhere, Saint Josemaria, contemplating this moment, writes: “Jesus has died, and there is as yet no sign of his glorious triumph.” No triumph, no crowds, no miracles, no apparent fulfillment of the promises. But then Josemaria reacts. “Here is our chance to react against our weaknesses with an act of faith. We can trust in God and resolve to put love into the things we do each day.” (Christ is Passing By, no. 96) That is an extraordinary consequence of contemplating the Pietà, not necessarily that I will do something that people consider heroic or great. Rather, tomorrow I will put more love into the things I do each day; and I will start, not tomorrow, but today. Today, because holiness is fidelity when we do not see results. A mother caring for a difficult child that doesn't seem to be improving, a priest continuing his ministry when he does not see fruit or receive recognition for his work, a person persevering in prayer despite dryness, someone carrying out professional work faithfully when no one notices. Mary holds a dead Son, and she believes.
And finally, the seventh ‘dolor’, the stone closes the tomb. Saint Josemaria describes it with simplicity: "The Mother of Our Lord, My Mother, also, take their leave. Night falls.” Night falls. What must Mary's heart have been like that night? Yet St. Josemaria refuses to let us interpret the tomb as defeat. “Now it is all over. The work of our redemption has been accomplished. We have been bought at a great price.” The tomb becomes a call to conversion. My life is no longer mine. Christ has paid for me, and Saint Josemaria draws the consequence in the fourteenth station: “We must make Christ's life and death our own, dying through mortification and penance, so that Christ may live in us through love.” But perhaps there's even a more beautiful way to finish. Saint Josemaria thinks about Mary's heart during the Passion. This is the same heart that noticed at Cana that the wine had run out. Such a sensitive heart! How intensely that heart must have suffered at the cruelty inflicted upon Jesus. He gave us the best of wine and we give him vinegar! And yet Mary does not speak. Like her Son, she loves, keeps silent, and forgives. And Saint Josemaria concludes: “Here we see the strength of Love.” There is the final lesson of the ‘dolors’. She loves, she keeps silent, she forgives. There is no resentment, no bitterness, no hatred for those who have killed her Son-- just love!
So let us return to the beginning: “The Virgin of Sorrows. When you contemplate her, look into her heart.” What have we seen there? A heart pierced by a sword, a heart that searches for Jesus, a heart that says ‘fiat’, a heart that stands beside the cross, a heart that holds the dead Christ, a heart that continues to believe when night falls, and above all, a heart that loves. Perhaps that is why the seven sorrows are not ultimately seven lessons about suffering; they are seven lessons about Love, because suffering reveals love, and Mary's sorrow reveals that her entire heart belongs to Jesus. Saint Josemaria says something in the way that captures this beautifully: “Mary is not prominent amid the palms of Jerusalem, or the great public triumphs, but when everyone abandons Jesus, she does not flee from the contempt of Golgotha.”
Mother, teach me that fidelity. When Jesus gives consolation, ‘fiat’. When he seems silent, ‘fiat’. When I understand, ‘fiat’. When I do not understand, ‘fiat’. When the road leads to Bethlehem, ‘fiat’; when it leads to Egypt, ‘fiat’, when it leads to Calvary, ‘fiat’. And when there is nothing left to do except to stand beside the cross, Stabat mater. Mother, let me stand with you, let me believe with you. Let me say yes with you. Let me love with you. And when I fail, when I lose Jesus through my own fault, let the prayer Saint Josemaria made while contemplating your third sorrow become my prayer: “Jesus, may I never lose Thee again.” Holy Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, Mother of Sorrows, teach us to look at Jesus with your eyes, to accept the cross with your faith, and to love Him with your heart.
I thank You, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations which you have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask your help to put them into effect. My Immaculate Mother; Saint Joseph, my father and lord; my guardian angel, intercede for me.
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