A NOVENA TO OUR
SORROWFUL MOTHER

This novena prayer printed below to our Mother of Sorrows, also known as our Sorrowful Mother, pays solemn tribute to our Blessed Mother Mary in recalling both the “unceasing sufferings”, in her sorrowful life and, more specifically, the profound anguish she experienced when standing at the Cross witnessing Her Divine Son’s Crucifixion at Calvary.

A little further on, we hear that she drank so deeply of the chalice of her Son in His Passion that she can sympathize with the sufferings of those who are still in this valley of tears.

This makes a great reference to that line in the prayer Hail Holy Queen about our being in a valley of tears, brought about in no small part from our ambivalence about the importance of keeping our Lord’s commandments and avoiding sins.  

In this prayer we ask for assistance from our Sorrowful Mother in our requests given to her in the sanctuary of her wounded heart. Indeed, Mary has been the mediator par excellence with her Divine Son.

We see this in scripture at the start of our Lord's ministry at the Wedding Feast at Cana when Mary plaintively asks for Jesus’ assistance to resupply wine that has run out to avoid great embarrassment for the hosts of this celebration. And he responds of course by thinking water into wine. 

The prayer itself follows. Remember in reading its petitions that our Blessed Mother will gladly help us to do our Lord’s will on our often rocky road towards sanctity and Eternal Life.

After all, what are her final words in scripture spoken to the attendant staff at the wedding before her son performed his first of seven signs in John's gospel pointing to his divinity? They could well be her motto. She tells them to “do whatever He [that is, Jesus] tells you” (John 2:5)!

Most holy and afflicted Virgin, Mother of Sorrows and Queen of Martyrs! You stood motionless at the foot of the Cross beneath your dying Son. Through the sword of grief which pierced you then, through the unceasing sufferings of your life of sorrow, and the bliss which now fully repays you for your past trials and affliction, look upon me with a mother's tenderness and have pity on me, as I kneel before you to venerate your sorrows, and place my request with childlike confidence in the sanctuary of your wounded heart.

I beg of you to present to Jesus Christ in union with the infinite merits of His Passion and Death, your sufferings at the foot of the Cross, and through the power of both, to grant my request and here is where you would (mention it).

To whom shall I turn in my needs and miseries, if not to you Mother of mercy? You drank so deeply of the chalice of Your Son that you can sympathize with the sufferings of those who are still in this valley of tears.

Offer to our divine Saviour one drop of the blood which flowed from His wounds, one of the tears which trickled from His divine eyes, one of the pangs which rent His adorable Heart. Refuge of sinners and hope of all mankind, do not reject my humble petition, but mercifully hear and graciously grant my request, if it be according to the Will of God. Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, we offer You the merits of Mary, Your Mother and ours, as she stood beneath the Cross, in order that by her loving intercession we may obtain the happy fruits of Your passion and Death.

Speaking of the chalice mentioned in this prayer, Christ made reference to the chalice being His upcoming Passion several times in scripture (Matt 26:39 and Mark 14:36) and most memorably in His Agony in the Garden of Gesthenane right before His arrest when He asked His Heavenly Father to “remove this chalice from me, but yet not my will but thine be done” (Luke 22:42). 

Keep in mind here as well that our Blessed Mother also drank from another bitter chalice when she first saw Jesus so bruised and maligned on the Via Dolorosa and then on the cross emaciated in great pain in His slow painful death. St. Bonaventure once remarked that the wounds which were scattered all over the body of Jesus, were all united in one heart of Mary.

Indeed, it has been said that the Church calls Mary the Queen of Martyrs because her martyrdom surpassed that of all others. Although her body was not bruised, her heart and soul were pierced by the sword of compassion for her Divine Son. St. Alphonsus Liquori once noted quite movingly that Mary suffered in her heart all that Jesus endured in His body.

But so intense was and still is her love for her Divine Son Jesus and her desire for repentant sinners to partake of his graces that she was able to persevere in spite of her tremendous grief at Calvary.

As we meditate on what are her seven sorrows in a well known devotion to our Sorrowful Mother we see how she suffered shortly after Jesus’ birth when, in the first sorrow the holy man Simeon revealed to her when she and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem that a sword would pierce her soul (Luke 2:35).

Mary was well aware that Jesus would be crucified for our salvation years later. Indeed, it was once revealed to St. Bridget, centuries later that the afflicted mother, knowing all that her Son would have to suffer, suckling him, thought of the gall and vinegar; when she swathed him, of the cords with which he was to be bound; when she bore him in her arms, she thought of him being nailed to the cross; and when he slept, she thought of his death. 

As often as she put on him his clothes, she reflected that they 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 that were to pierce them, as Mary said to St. Bridget: "My eyes filled with tears, and my heart was tortured with grief."

And her suffering didn’t stop there. Soon after her encounter with Simeon she, along with Joseph and Jesus, had to flee to Egypt to escape the murderous wrath of King Herod who wanted the Christ child dead. 

Then we see in the third sorrow that she spent three days anxiously searching for Jesus in Jerusalem, when he had stayed behind there after Passover caravans including those with his parents had moved on, until she finally found him. 

The last four of the seven sorrows deal with Jesus in his Passion and our Blessed Mother having to endure her son’s being mocked, scourged and finally executed in the most brutal way imaginable on a cross between two thieves before He was finally taken down from His death and placed in a tomb. 

It is worth noting here that God has indeed given us an amazing intercessor in his Blessed Mother. Her love for our Lord is such that her happiness comes from seeing, and helping, others to do his Divine Will. 

We see a couple of examples of her sorrow in the church-approved private revelations such as that when she appeared to two small children in 1846 in La Salette, France, with her face buried in her hands in tears over sinful humanity. We see her also at times quite somber as Our Lady of Fatima when she appeared before the three Fatima visionaries on several occasions in 1917. 

And, speaking of tears, we have only to look at the private revelation approved by the church of our Blessed Mother as Our Lady of Akita in Japan in which in a statue of her manifested some 101 tears over a six year period from 1975-1981.

We can indeed draw great hope knowing that someone as powerful an intercessor as Mary, the Mother of God, as shown in numerous Marian apparitions, ardently wishes to assist us in our various trials and tribulations, with the graces, strength, and hope we all desperately need in this valley of tears these days! 

Don’t be afraid to ask for Mary’s help so that when you pass away you may hear our Lord say to you “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matt 25:34), that you may “share your Master’s joy” (Matt 25:23)!   

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