PRAYERS TO MARY AS
THE QUEEN OF MARTYRS

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We honor our Blessed Mother Mary in part as Our Lady of Sorrows, particularly on her feast day of September 15th. This is only fitting because her immense love for her Divine Son and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was reflected in her great sorrow over the rejection and painful crucifixion in Jerusalem He would receive at the end of His earthly ministry.

We hear much these days about the heartbreak of divided families over the politicization of so many social issues. And then there are those parents who’ve had to deal with the untimely death of their children from such tragedies as illness, violence, and drug abuse. The parents in these situations often feel incalculable and immeasurable loss and grief.

After all, in the natural order of things, it is more fitting for children to survive their parents rather than vice versa. Now in this regard think of the plight of our Blessed Mother Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows. Her sorrow started early, soon after Jesus’ birth in a cave in Bethlehem.

According to both church approved private revelations and tradition, when the “just and devout” man Simeon (Lk 2:2) saw Jesus presented in the Jerusalem temple as a little baby, he pointed out to her that Jesus would not only be a sign of light of revelation to the Gentiles, but a sign of contradiction, and that a sword would pierce her soul, so that the thoughts out of many hearts could be revealed.

Simeon’s prophecy is the first of what is known in religious devotions as the Seven Sorrows of Mary, which are often depicted in religious artwork as being seven swords going through her heart.

As the celebrated theologian St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote in his classic book the Glories of Mary:

The blessed Virgin herself revealed to St. Bridget, that while she lived on the earth there was not an hour when this grief did not pierce her soul: “As often”, she continued, as I looked at my Son, as often as I wrapped him in his swaddling- clothes, as often as I say in fresh grief, because I thought how he would be crucified..."

As often as she put on him his garment, she reflected that it would one day be torn from him, that he might be crucified; and when she beheld his sacred hands and feet, and thought of the nails which would one day pierce them, as Mary said to St. Bridget: “My eyes filled with tears, and my heart was tortured with grief.”

We can admire, in many ways, the fact that she had the firm determination and love to bring up Jesus as best she could; and to stand by and with Him as the Son of God being offered on the cross as the sacrificial lamb for our salvation at Calvary!

Numerous exorcists have attested to Mary’s immense power to repel demons, and to help us with the graces and strength we need to battle our sinful inclinations and to stay close to her Divine Son Jesus as we strive for sanctity.

For example the renowned exorcist Father Chad Ripperger has noted that, in praying to Our Lady of Sorrows, she can reveal your own spiritual defects so you can fight against your specific sins with the corresponding virtues, such as with humility over pride, temperance over gluttony, and chastity over lust, for some prominent examples.

Indeed, is it not fitting that she who was conceived without sin would be ready, willing, and able to assist us in battling our sinful proclivities?

In addition to the many pages we have (the first of which I will link to in the description page for this podcast, which covers a lot of territory), I would like to add these particular prayers below/that I’m about to recite to Our Blessed Mother as Mary, Queen of Martyrs.

Mary, most holy Virgin and Queen of Martyrs, accept the sincere homage of my filial affection. Into thy heart, pierced by so many swords, do thou welcome my poor soul. Receive it as the companion of thy sorrows at the foot of the Cross, on which Jesus died for the redemption of the world. With thee, O sorrowful Virgin, I will gladly suffer all the trials, contradictions, and infirmities which it shall please our Lord to send me.

I offer them all to thee in memory of thy sorrows, so that every thought of my mind, and every beat of my heart may be an act of compassion and of love for thee. And do thou, sweet Mother, have pity on me, reconcile me to thy divine Son, Jesus, keep me in His grace and assist me in my last agony, so that I may be able to meet thee in heaven and sing thy glories. Amen.

You may notice, in reading this first prayer above, that we are asked to offer up our sufferings, in union with Mary’s and those of her divine Son, for the conversion of sinners, forgiveness of sins, reparation for sins, and salvation of souls.

This is not to say that her Son's sacrifice was not enough, because it certainly redeemed humanity, but then each of us can add our own personal need of salvation to that in our own sufferings, which then can make the expiations from those sufferings that much easier to endure.

Offering up sufferings for sins is a very time-honored and well-established devotion in our Church, but this prayer adds that we can offer them up in conjunction with our Blessed Mother's sufferings as well.

This second prayer continues and strengthens our plea and our ties to our Blessed Mother as the Mother of Sorrows and the Queen of Martyrs:

Most sorrowful Mother, in your arms lies the divine Victim, the Wheat of sacrifice, mangled, crushed, and ground by the weight of our sins. Having completed His life of sacrifice, the Lamb of God returns to you. Your motherly heart alone is able to understand all that He has suffered and all that He has done. Once again it is in your arms that He finds His place of rest.

Queen of martyrs, out of love for us you cooperated in your Son’s work of redemption. You offered in union with Him one and the same sacrifice to the Father for our salvation. In giving up your Son to death, you have given us a new life. Filled with gratitude for this great gift, I come to offer you my childlike love.

Truly, Mother of Sorrows, I have entered your heart by the sword! And from the birth-pangs of Cavalry to this very day what proofs of your motherly tenderness have you not given me! I beg you to continue to watch over me constantly and obtain for me the grace to appreciate the Passion of your divine Son. Teach me to enter ever more deeply into the spirit of its mysteries so that I may more fully obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus merited for us by His Passion and Death. Amen

On that subject, of martyrdom, St. Alphonsus wrote in The Glories of Mary:

Let us consider the reasons why the martyrdom of Mary was greater than that of all the martyrs. In the first place, it must be remembered that the martyrs suffered their martyrdom in the body, by means of fire or steel; Mary suffered martyrdom in her soul; as St. Simeon had before prophesied: and thy own soul a sword shall pierce as if the holy old man had said to her: "Oh holy Virgin, the bodies of the other martyrs will be torn with iron, but thou wilt be pierced and martyred in thy soul, by the passion of thy own Son".

Now, as the soul is more noble than the body, so much greater was the suffering of Mary than that of all the martyrs; as Jesus Christ himself said to St. Catherine of Siena: "There is no comparison between the sufferings of the soul and the body."

There can be no doubt that Mary suffered in her heart all the tortures by which she saw her beloved Jesus tormented. Every one knows that the sufferings of children are also the sufferings of their mothers, when they are the witnesses of them…..Thus also was it with Mary; all those scourgings, torments, thorns, nails, and the cross, which tortured the innocent flesh of Jesus, entered at the same time into the heart of Mary to complete her martyrdom.

We see Mary still to this day pleading for humanity to accept her Son in a world that's giving Him so many rejections and so much heartache. She has appeared in church approved private revelations such as those from Our Lady of LaSalette, Our Lady of Fatima and, more recently, Our Lady of Akita, constantly warning us not to make their heartaches ours as well from so much disobedience to Jesus!

If we can heed her warnings each of us in our own way can start to bring good out of so much evil in this world, knowing that there's going to be some peace and joy at the end of our own sorrows.

Having done so, we can appeal to our Sorrowful Mother as Queen of Martyrs saying as in the end of the first prayer above: "Sweet Mother, have pity on me, reconcile me to thy divine Son, Jesus, keep me in His grace and assist me in my last agony, so that I may be able to meet thee in heaven and sing thy glories. Amen."

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