Episode Details

It's the Feast of Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, 1st Class, with the color of White. In this episode: the meditation: "Attendance at Mass", a preview of this week's episode of The SSPX Podcast: "Audiobook Chapter 17 "I Adhere to Eternal Rome"", and today's thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows? podcast@sspx.org

Sources Used Today:

• "Attendance at Mass" — From the Assumption to Advent
  • https://angeluspress.org/products/from-trinity-sunday-to-the-assumption
  
  
• The SSPX Podcast: "Audiobook Chapter 17 "I Adhere to Eternal Rome"" (SSPX Podcast)
  • View on YouTube
  • Listen & Subscribe on SSPXpodcast.com
  
  
• The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
  • https://angeluspress.org/products/spiritual-life-archbishop
  
  

Please support our new project, the Archbishop Lefebvre Biography Audiobook:

• Learn more:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Wp4MQdK2o
• Donate:https://sspx.gifts/audiobook

The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows asks us to look at the life of Christ from a perspective we don't always stop to consider: what was all of this like for His Mother?

Catholics have meditated on Mary's suffering since the earliest centuries, especially her presence at Calvary. Simeon had foretold it when Jesus was still an infant: "Thy own soul a sword shall pierce." Medieval Christians eventually began identifying particular moments when that sword seemed especially sharp.

These became the Seven Sorrows of Mary: Simeon's prophecy, the Flight into Egypt, losing the Child Jesus in Jerusalem, meeting Christ on the road to Calvary, standing beneath the Cross, receiving His dead body, and watching Him placed in the tomb.

And devotion to them became enormous.

By the Middle Ages, Christians were meditating on Mary's sorrows through prayers, artwork, processions, and hymns. The most famous is the Stabat Mater, traditionally attributed to the thirteenth-century Franciscan Jacopone da Todi. Its opening image is simple and devastating: Mary standing beside the Cross while her Son dies.

The Servite Order made this devotion especially their own. Founded in Florence in the thirteenth century by the Seven Holy Founders, the Servites spread devotion to the Seven Sorrows throughout Europe. The familiar image of Mary's heart pierced by seven swords comes directly from this tradition.

Interestingly, the Church eventually had two feasts honoring Mary's sorrows.

One developed on the Friday of Passion Week, focusing particularly on Mary's compassion during the Passion. The other was celebrated by the Servites in Septembe