+Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary+
Today we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Last week we celebrated the feast of the Blessed Virgin’s Nativity. Sept. 19 is the anniversary of Our Lady’s apparition to Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud at La Salette in 1846, where Mary warned us that Rome would lose the faith and become the seat of Antichrist. On May 13,1846, four months prior to Our Lady’s arrival at La Salette, Pope Gregory XVI received a packet containing The Permanent Instructions of the Alta Vendita from the hands of one Cretineau-Joly. Two weeks later, the Pope was dead. In recent blogs we have documented the infiltration of LibTrad clergy by Freemasonry. There can be little doubt that Melanie’s mission on earth was to promote Our Lady’s message in order to draw attention to the Masonic element then infiltrating the clergy. And that infiltration continues to this day. In an 1855 letter to one M. Melin, the Cure of Corps, France, Melanie spoke of her anxiety concerning the part of the La Salette Secret that dealt with priests and religious:
“I am afraid of many greater evils and I also am afraid that the words from Heaven will be ignored because they are recounted by such a great sinner as I am. Some of these things concern priests, the priests of France especially, and the rest are to do with the religious orders of men and women… This was said to me: ‘Formerly, I was crucified by those who knew Me not. Today and every day I am crucified by those who know Me, by many priests. They imagine they see, but it is not by My light, but by the light of the devil. Formerly priests and monks and nuns were the pillars of My church, but today the pillars have fallen. Calamities are going to rain upon the world and then cries and groans will rise up to Me, but for a time I shall be as if deaf.'”
In another letter to Rev. Robaud, Jan. 2, 1892, Melanie wrote: “The Church will endure forever, Our Lord said so. But among the teaching members of the Church, what traitors, what apostates, what mercenaries, what sectarians, who bear the imprint or the sign of the beast with ten horns St. John speaks of in his vision on Patmos! But this beast similar to the Lamb, who rises out of the earth, isn’t it the figure of faithless ecclesiastics?” And how true these words of Melanie’s are today, both of Novus Ordo and LibTrad clergy! How can anyone doubt that all she envisioned has come to pass? In Chapter 12 of the Apocalypse, Our Lady labors to give birth while the dragon waits to devour her progeny. Some surmise this is the election of a pope intended to reign in these times but prevented from doing so, and certainly the papacy been usurped and devoured by the malice of Satan. Other say this is a description of Mary laboring for the salvation of her children living through the horrors of the end times. Both observations are obviously correct.
What causes our poor Mother the most sorrow today? Disobedience to her Divine Son and the teachings of His Vicars. For this Mother, most pure, most holy, most obedient, is also the patroness of the papacy. And if Our Lord entrusted us to Her, He entrusted His teachings first to St. Peter and under his guidance, the rest of the twelve, who counted the Blessed Mother among the faithful to whom they would communicate these truths. Christ committed his Mother’s earthly care to St. John. Both she and St. John would suffer the “white martyrdom,” spiritual death without dying, for they would live for many years without the One they loved the most. We cannot imitate the Blessed Virgin unless we emulate her in the boundless love she had for her Son. And it is Christ Himself who told us all how to love Him: “If you love Me, keep my commandments… Take up thy Cross and follow Me.” We suffer here as she suffered, but are we willing to become worthy of her help, her love?
Read below what Fr. Alonso Mesia S.J. wrote on this topic in his The Three Hours (1899):
“Our Lord, from the height of His Cross, is looking down upon His Blessed Mother, whose
heart is sunk in an abyss of anguish, and yet He opens before her a new abyss of anguish by giving her all mankind to be her children in the person of St. John.
“Most afflicted Mother! what a piercing sword must it not be, that thus so deeply wounds thy
tender heart. Thy son Jesus commends all sinners to thee, that thou mayest receive them for thy children in His place. Heartrending exchange! Thou losest thy most amiable Son
Jesus, and in His stead receivest sinners, nay, ever such perverse and obstinate sinners, as have repeatedly crucified Him by their sins. Most sorrowful Lady, what a torment to thy tender heart, already deeply wounded without this new stab. What ! So ungrateful a wretch committed to thy care; so grievous a sinner to be adopted for thy child! O infinite charity of our Saviour towards sinners, in confiding them to His own Blessed Mother to be their Mother also. O incomparable mercy of the compassionate Mother of Jesus! who, full of love and gentleness, presses the whole world to her bosom, with all tender solicitude and maternal affection.
“Refuge of Sinners. How shall we express our gratitude for so great, so heroic an act, by which thou hast vouchsafed to accept us for thy children? By what obedience, by what services, can we render ourselves worthy of so great a favour? O happy sinners! reflect with joy on the eminent dignity of Mary, your Mother. Mary, who is the Mother of God: a Mother, full of grace; a Mother, the mirror of sanctity and purity, and this Mother your Mother also. Alas! what a contrast between so holy a Mother and such perverse children: between a Mother so pure and children so corrupt.
“O great Oueen of Heaven, take us now under thy protection. and make us children worthy of thee. Where is the Christian, who with the greatest submission and confidence ought not to acknowledge thee for his Mother. Hell trembled at hearing the words of Jesus: the devils raged with envy. Hearken, O man! listen, O Hell! Mary is the Mother of sinners, the Mother of the just, the Mother of all. O blessed Lady, I kiss thy sacred feet a thousand times, and exclaim with a voice that I wish might echo through heaven and earth: However unworthy I am to be called the child of Mary, yet, O great Queen, obtain that I may one day behold thee, and love thy Son Jesus, as much, if possible, as thou thyself lovest Him.
“Devout souls, look up to Jesus who gives you to His Mother’s care, and, in her, bestows on you all the riches of His mercy, which you will never obtain without the intercession of Mary. Through her we obtain pardon from her Son, together with all His precious graces. O Jesus, inexhaustible fountain of love and generosity, what a boundless love must have been Thine to love us with so much tenderness. Since Jesus, O my soul, has said of thee, Ecce Mater, Behold thy Mother! Surely thou art bound to contemplate her, to meditate on her graces with all thy powers and faculties. Consider her well, O my soul, lift up thine eyes, raise thy whole heart to her; for she also says to thee, Ecce Mater. I am your Mother, consider me as such. Behold her oppressed with grief on account of your sins. Sympathize with her in the sorrow she feels for you. She prays for you: she implores mercy and pardon for you. Beseech her by her sorrows to look upon you as her child, and to obtain for you all necessary help, now, and at the awful hour of death.
“O Mother of God, prove thyself my Mother also. Ah! turn those merciful eyes of thine upon me, beloved Mother. Remember the inexpressible anguish which we cost thee at the foot of the Cross. Let not the excessive grief thou didst then suffer be all in vain. May thy sorrows and thy holy patronage prove a powerful assistance to me in my last agony. Today, O amiable Mother! on this day I would fain show myself thy child. even were I to lay down my life in love and sorrow at the foot of the Cross here. Welcome, O happy death! Would that I might die at the feet of Mary my Mother, and at the feet of Jesus so full of love for me.
“Jesus, in His last moments, gives us today to His Virgin Mother. O Mary, who can understand what thou then must have suffered? Accept me for thy child and be to me a Mother, as I now promise thee loyal obedience. In thanksgiving to Jesus for having given us Mary for our Mother, let us recite five times the following prayer: Most sweet Jesus, we return Thee infinite thanks having given Thy blessed Mother, Mary, to be our Mother also.
“O sorrowful Mary, our Mother, pray for thy sinful children now, and at the hour of our death.” (End of Fr. Mesia quotes)
And this also from Fr. Bernard A. Fuller, S.J., (At Noon on Calvary, 1930):
“Jesus is whispering to you from the Cross. He has done all this for love of you. He is going to ask you now to do something for love of Him. It is His dying wish: “Son, behold thy Mother.”
“And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own.” So standing here under the Cross of Jesus take His Blessed Mother for your own. In His sight dedicate and consecrate yourself to her: “Lord Jesus, my dying Saviour , I will take her unto my own; I will honor her and I will love her. She will be my Mother. No word or deed of mine will ever wound her heart or bring the blush of shame to her cheeks.”
“This is Christ’s dying wish, and you can do nothing that will please Him more. “If I be lifted up, I will draw all things to Me”; and lifted up on the Cross of Calvary, He knows that the surest way of coming to His love is through Mary His Mother. He knows that through Mary’s love human love will be kept pure and manly and divine. He knows that if you love her your little ones will love her and in her love their hearts will be pure and their faith will be strong. Calvary and all its pains and insults and blasphemies are worth the love of a pure boy’s and a pure girl’s heart. Oh! He knows that it is hard to bring up children and to train them in the love and the fear of God. He knows what it costs — all the toil, all the anxious prayers, all the daily sacrifices. But, oh! you devoted mothers and fathers of the children of God, looking down on His Blessed Mother, Jesus sees you. From the Cross of Calvary the bleeding hand of your dying Saviour is blessing you and your homes.”
Novena in Honour of the Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin
O ! most blessed and afflicted Virgin, Queen of Martyrs! thou who didst stand unshrinking beneath the Cross beholding the agony of thy dying Son; through the sword of grief which pierced thee then, through the continual sufferings of thy life of sorrow, through the unutterable joy which now far more than repays thee for them, look down with a mother’s pity and tenderness on me kneeling before thee to venerate thy sacred sorrows and to lay my petition with child-like trust in the shrine of thy wounded heart. I beg of thee, O! Mother, continually to plead for me with thy Son, and through the merits of His most sacred Passion and Death, together with thy own sufferings at the foot of the Cross, so touch His sacred Heart who can
refuse thee nothing, that I may surely obtain my request. To whom shall I fly in my wants and miseries, if not to thee, O Mother of Mercy, who having so deeply drunk of the chalice of thy Son, canst most pity and feel for us poor exiles, still doomed to sigh in this valley of tears. Offer to Jesus but one drop of His Precious Blood, but one pang of His adorable Heart; remind Him that thou art our life, our sweetness, and our hope, and obtain what I ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
