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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: Fire me with your love

Posted on March 21, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 21

Virgin, ever interceding,

Hear me in my fervent pleading:

Fire me with your love of Christ.

For Reflection:

Perhaps that which hinders us most from attaining “open-ended waiting” is our limited capacity to love. Today’s GraceLine contains the solution to this – we need Mary’s love of Christ since our own love is so weakened by concupiscence and sinfulness. St. Louis de Montfort tells us that if we consecrate ourselves to Jesus through Mary, our Mother gives us the operations of her soul. That means, we can receive her own love of Christ as our own. Is God asking you to make this consecration? Renew it? Live it more fully? How can you begin to do so today?

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: All the sorrow

Posted on March 20, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 20

Mary, fount of love’s devotion,

Let me share with true emotion

All the sorrow you endured.

For Reflection:

Rev. Bertrand Weaver, C.P. writes in his book, His Cross in Your Life, that God willed to have Mary at Calvary as an “associate teacher of wisdom.” He says that, “By accepting grief ‘great as the sea,’ she united with her Divine Son in giving mankind an example of bowing before the Will of God when it could not have been more difficult.” Nouwen may have put it this way: Mary’s life was a study of open-ended waiting, a characteristic of which is “giving up control over our future and letting God define our life.”

If you truly pray the above stanza of Stabat Mater you are asking for the same grace. You are asking to live open-ended waiting. To what extent are you really willing to pray for this? What would encourage you? What would hinder you? Give all to Mary, Fount of Love’s Devotion.

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: Breathe his very last

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 19

Solemnity of Saint Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Christ she saw with life-blood failing,

All her anguish unavailing,

Saw him breathe his very last.

For Reflection:

With Jesus, Mary had sojourned the agonizing road to Calvary. She had watched Him be beaten and tormented, ridiculed and spat upon. She had watched Him fall. And get up. Fall. And get up. Fall. And get up. She had watched nine inch nails pierce His hands and feet. She had seen Him hoisted into the air on a cross. And now she watches Him take His last breath as His life’s blood runs out. The soldier’s lance pierces them both. In light of this verse and meditation, read John 3:16. Substitute your name for “the world.” Sit with this truth and let it take hold of you. Journal your insights and reflections.

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: Bruised and beaten by the rod

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 18

Christ she saw, for our salvation,

Scourged with cruel acclamation,

Bruised and beaten by the rod.

For Reflection:

Henri Nouwen also tells us that waiting is active, not passive. It requires the gift of receptivity, an openess to that which God is doing in the midst of the waiting.

Meditate on the words “Christ she saw…” As this verse says, Mary’s eyes surely saw her Son’s physical condition while she gazed upon Him. But what else might Mary have been seeing as she held vigil at the foot of the Cross? What might she have seen God doing in the midst of this holocaust? What might He be doing as you “hold vigil” in your current waiting period?

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: The Virgin’s grief

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 17

Who, that sorrow contemplating,

On that passion meditating,

Would not share the Virgin’s grief?

For Reflection:

Henri Nouwen says that waiting is patient. He tells us that “The word ‘patience’ means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us…Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there.”

With comprehension and concentration, slowly read today’s GraceLine a second time. It is an invitation into Mary’s suffering – to share the Virgin’s grief. Ask Our Lady to take you into her Immaculate Heart and wait there with her. Wait with patience until what is hidden there manifests itself to you. Then journal about your insights.

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: Ever-patient in her yearning

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 16

Ever-patient in her yearning

Though her tear-filled eyes were burning,

Mary gazed upon her Son.

For Reflection:

In his writing, The Spirituality of Waiting, Henri Nouwen gives five characteristics of waiting. He tells us waiting is a movement. “People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. … They have received something that is a work in them, like a seed that has started to grow… So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more.”

How is this truth depicted in the stanza above? Consider Mary’s gaze. What might have been transpiring in her heart as Mary looked upon her Son and as He gazed upon her? What promise(s) had she received and what might be the “something more” still yet to come?

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: Mary watched her dying Son

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 15

With what pain and desolation,

With what noble resignation,

Mary watched her dying Son.

For Reflection:

Many spiritual writers have discussed the “spirituality of waiting” and the

virtues it requires. Some of these are patience, long-suffering, trust,

surrender, humility, gratitude, receptivity, hope. In what ways do you think Mary embodied all of these as she watched her Son die? Which of these

do you most need to acquire?

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: Bitter sorrow pierced her heart

Posted on March 14, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 14

While she waited in her anguish,

Seeing Christ in torment languish,

Bitter sorrow pierced her heart.

For Reflection:

This verse tells us Mary “waited.” What attitude of heart do you think marked Mary’s disposition as she waited? What virtues? Recall a time when you, too, waited. What marked your disposition? What virtues did you exhibit?

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: Mary stood in sorrow weeping

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 13

At the cross her station keeping,

Mary stood in sorrow weeping

When her Son was crucified.

For Reflection:

Father Faber tells us that each consecutive suffering of Our Lady outstripped its predecessor in pain, because each new suffering had “more love to torture, and therefore more power of inflicting pain.” In this first verse of the Stabat Mater, Mary experiences the fifth sword to her heart. She is at the summit of her suffering. Consider Father Faber’s quote in light of this. What do you think he means by “more love to torture?” What is the connection between love and pain? To what extent are you willing to truly love?

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Lenten Journey Through the Sorrows of Mary: She remained beside Jesus

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Women of Grace Staff

March 12

“The Virgin Mary, who believed in the word of the Lord, did not lose her faith

in God when she saw her Son rejected, abused and crucified. Rather

she remained beside Jesus, suffering and praying, until the end. And she

saw the radiant dawn of His Resurrection. Let us learn from her to witness

to our faith with a life of humble service, ready to personally pay the price

of staying faithful to the Gospel of love and truth, certain that nothing that

we do will be lost.”

– Pope Benedict XVI

For Reflection:

In what way do these words of the Holy Father speak to you today? Are we willing to face the moments of our life, from this second forward in persona Maria? How have Mary’s dolors encouraged you and strengthened you to do so?

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