Mother of Sorrows: Mary’s Tears as A Call to Dignity

This month of September is dedicated to our Lady of Sorrows.  Since it is dedicated to her, we should listen to her message, especially as she appeared weeping at La Salette France on September 19, 1846.  As the Lady of Sorrows (even appearing in the month of September), she told us:

“I have appointed you six days for working. The seventh I have reserved for myself. And no one will give it to me. This it is which causes the weight of my Son’s arm to be crushing. The cart drivers cannot swear without bringing in my Son’s name. These are the two things which make my Son’s arms so burdensome… “Do you say your prayers well, my children?” The children answered with one voice: “Not too well, Madame, hardly at all!”   The Lady said: “Ah, my children, it is very important to do so, at night and in the morning. When you don't have time, at least say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and whenever you can, say more.”

So, there are three things that are making our Blessed Mother weep.  Our Lady of La Salette tells us that not observing the sabbath, using God’s name in vain, and forgetting to pray make her sorrowful.   In short, when we forget our relationship with God, we forget our dignity, and this hurts our mother’s heart! 

This is the danger of worldly philosophies which Our Lady of La Salette condemned through her tears.   We do not exist for work, but for God!  We do not exist for the commune or the state which is the reason the Church condemns Marxism/Communism.   We do not exist for the social popularity or simply what culture deems good, especially when it goes against God’s law such as abortion and lack of respect for God-given biology.   This is the reason the Church condemns socialism and encourages clergy to speak out against both Marxism and socialism. Pope Pius IX wrote in Nostis et Nobiscum:

[T]he special goal of their proponents is to introduce to the people the pernicious fictions of Socialism and Communism by misapplying the terms “liberty” and “equality.” The final goal shared by these teachings, whether of Communism or Socialism… is to excite by continuous disturbances workers and others, especially those of the lower class, whom they have deceived by their lies and deluded by the promise of a happier condition. They are preparing them for plundering, stealing, and usurping first the Church’s and then everyone’s property. After this they will profane all law, human and divine, to destroy divine worship and to subvert the entire ordering of civil societies… it is your duty, venerable brothers, to help the faithful realize that if they let themselves be deceived by such perverted  doctrines and theories, these theories will cause their temporal and their eternal destruction (sec #18) [emphasis mine].

Jesus himself reminds us of these dangers when He says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21).

Also, we are reminded that we do not exist for money which Pope John Paul II labeled as “unbridled capitalism” in Centesimus Annus (see sec #8).  In this he echoes Pope Leo XIII’s condemnation of the same concept in Rerum Novarum.  Pope Leo XIII wrote, “the first thing of all to secure is to save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making. It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies” (sec. #42).  Our Lord himself is the foundation for these teachings exclaiming, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matt. 6:24).

These three worldly philosophies made Our Lady of La Salette weep because they take away our dignity as children of God!  They all lead to placing something above God, thus forgetting our dignity.  This is what Robert Cardinal Sarah strongly warns the West to avoid in living by means of “practical atheism.”   Pope Pius XI called atheistic living, particularly speaking of Communism, “a Satanic Scourge” in Divini Redemptoris ( sec. 7).   It is Satan who wants us to live our lives for something other than God.   It is Satan who wants us to “gain the whole world but lose our souls” (Mk. 8:36) under the disguise of “profit” (unbridled capitalism), “following what is socially popular” (socialism), or keeping a false peace by simply avoiding conflict within the state (Marxism).    Cardinal Sarah is right to detest these modes of Practical Atheism as they not only destroy our souls and make Our Blessed Mother sorrowful, but they are also a subtle means of destroying the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church!  This is at the heart of Satan’s Plan.   There is a crisis of epic proportions and many in the West, in the Church, are falling into this trap of Practical Atheism!

 So, what can we do about it?  We again listen to the words of Our Lady of Sorrows at La Salette who said, “If my people are converted, the very stones will become mounds of wheat and the potatoes will grow self-sown.”  We must convert, live out our God-given dignity (not State-given, nor social-status given, nor economic-status given) with courage and faith to help with the Mission of the Church.  As Cardinal Sarah encourages us:

The mission of the Church has always demanded genuine, humble courage, and now it demands it more than ever… “Be not afraid,” Jesus repeats in the Gospel…This recommendation has been repeated many times by the popes of our times.  People today have the right to expect that Christians will demonstrate courage, clarity, firmness, and tenacity in the witness that they are called to give…In the midst of this world and all its perversions, we must live as strangers, as witnesses to the true meaning of life, workers of the silent growth of the Kingdom of God, always ready to endure persecutions rather than to use equivocal or ambiguous language, giving witness with transparency and clarity worthy of the gospel (Catechism of the Spiritual Life, p. 303).

We must live lives worthy of the Gospel.  We can only share in the Good News (Gospel in Greek) if we share our lives in prioritizing God!!  This is what Our Lady of La Salette, the Mother of Sorrows, wants from us her children.   She wants us to not keep pretending that all is okay, but to get to the heart of the matter which is to get back to the Heart of Christ!!!!  In Him, there is hope and light because in Jesus, “there is no darkness at all” (1Jn. 1:5).  

We, as a Church must intentionally choose to bring people to the light so that in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, we will not “have priest reduced to the role of social worker and the message of faith reduced to political views [such as the three mentioned in this article]” (Catechism of Spiritual Life, p. 301).   We must be intentional about pointing people to God.  This means doing Spiritual Works of Mercy such as instructing the ignorant, admonishing the sinner, and counseling the doubtful with the love of God.   True Mercy always leads to the heart of Christ which is the way to truth and life (Jn. 14:6).

I’ll conclude with the words of Pope Benedict XVI in Faith and Future which aligns with the Message of the Mother of Sorrows in our Lady of La Salette.  He writes:

Everything will seem lost, but at the right moment, in the most dramatic stage of crisis, the Church will be reborn.  It will be smaller, poorer, almost catacombal, but even more holy.  For it will no longer be the Church of those who seek to please the world, but the Church of those who are faithful to God and His eternal law… To put it more positively:  the future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality…The real crisis has scarcely begun.  We will have to count on terrific upheavals.  But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already…but the Church of faith.

Let us aim to be the Church of Faith, condemn false life-world views, and listen to Our Lady of La Salette, our Mother of Sorrows.

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