(On September 15, the Church celebrates the Feast of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady of Sorrows is the patroness of the Congregation of Holy Cross. I will be posting one of the seven sorrows each day leading up to the feast day. This is only part of a larger reflection that has not yet been published. The stories are meant to encourage your own reflection about each of the sorrows found in the gospels.)

The Sixth Sorrow: Mary receiving the body of Jesus in her arms

Mark: 15:42- 47

When it was already evening, since it was the day of preparation, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a distinguished member of the council, who was himself awaiting the kingdom of God, came and courageously went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, Pilate was amazed that he was already dead. He summoned the centurion and asked him if Jesus had already died. And when he learned of it from the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. Having bought a linen cloth, he took him down, wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses watched where he was laid.

Rock away, my baby

Several years into my priestly ministry, I served in a parish that was close to a children’s hospital. There seemed to be a special relationship between the hospital and the parish community. Parents within the worshipping assembly were especially attached in prayer to the large hospital that served the needs of families from far beyond the crowded neighborhood. Most parishioners were profoundly aware that very dedicated staff members in the hospital were caring for very ill children.

I was not a full-time staff member at the parish but only in residence. However, I was part of the nighttime watch for emergencies for not only the children’s hospital but for several other medical facilities in the neighborhood. Before going to bed on the nights I was on duty, I would move the large, heavy black phone in my room to the floor next to my bed so I could easily reach it in case of an emergency.

I remember this particular night when I received a call from the children’s hospital. I could almost feel in the bells of the phone that that this ring would be for an emergency from a desperate parent. Somehow I could tell the terror and fear of the family by this ring that would beckon me to another child’s bedside.

The soft voice of a nurse on the other end of the phone told me that a newborn child was going to be taken off life-support. I jumped into my black clothes and walked over to the hospital fearing for the parents, the family and the child. I hurried through the shadows of streetlights reflecting on the broken sidewalks. I dashed among the headlights from cars piercing the darkness as they passed me by. I scurried among the fallen leaves on the sidewalk, feeling the fallen hopes of this family within my heart and imagination. I never wanted to go to this hospital in the middle of the night because I knew the outcome of this call would be great sorrow for so many people. However, I found my way through the emergency room entrance and into the neonatal unit and into the room where the child was struggling for life on earth.

I entered the room quietly and first glanced around the facility to try to figure out what was really happening. Several nurses where working diligently around the newborn. A couple of doctors where whispering to the parents in the corner of the room. The room was small and packed with emotion even though I could not hear one word of conversation.

The only thing I could hear was the sound of machines trying to keep the child alive. Even the piercing hum of the machines sounded incredibly desperate, trying to do the best thing, trying to do the very thing that they were designed to do, trying to work overtime to keep the fragile life here among the family.

I stood in the room silently waiting to meet the mother. She was sitting in a wheelchair, waiting in the corner. The father stood patiently next to her. She was drenched in fear and exhaustion. I made my way to the corner and stooped down to hold the mother’s hand. I do not remember any words between us, just our eyes meeting. I tried my best to just receive her fear.

After awhile the doctors and nurses invited the parents and me over to the tiny bed of the premature child. The sounds of the machines seemed to herald fear as our eyes gazed down to the tiny bundle. The doctors gave into me as a representative of God, in their desperate search for answers. They opened up a space for me to pray out loud.

I started the prayer singing a psalm refrain over and over again. The sound of my voice hovered over the room. Everyone knew this was a sound of a different remedy. The doctors unplugged the machines and then the only sound in the room was my voice calling out for the Shepherd’s care. After a few minutes, the child died.

The only sound that remained was the silence of all of our lives huddled around the body of the child. This silence was the most overwhelming sound of the night. This silence of grief and letting go was the sound these parents would never forget.

The nurses cuddled the body of the child in blankets. They handed the body to the arms of the child’s mother. We all sat and waited in silence for the mother to receive the body of the child that she had just given birth to hours before. The doctors left the room and the nurses cleaned up the space.

The nurses escorted the parents and myself into another room. There was an oversized rocking chair in the corner facing a window. The mother carried her dead child over to the rocking chair and began rocking the body of her beloved. The mother then invited me to sit in the chair with her. I went over and sat down in the rocking chair. I raised my arm over the mother’s shoulders to hold her as she held her dead son. We rocked and rocked. We rocked away the grief until I could see the sun rising through the blinds of the window. We rocked the nighttime away, waiting for the light of a new day.

Reflection Prompts:

How can we learn to receive in our arms and in our hearts the suffering of our world?

What stops us from reaching out to others who most need our assistance?

(On September 15, the Church celebrates the Feast of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady of Sorrows is the patroness of the Congregation of Holy Cross. I will be posting one of the seven sorrows each day leading up to the feast day. This is only part of a larger reflection that has not yet been published. The stories are meant to encourage your own reflection about each of the sorrows found in the gospels.)

The Fifth Sorrow: Jesus dies on the cross

John 19: 25-30

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother^* and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.”

There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.

Among the permanent scars

   One of my cousins died when I was four years old. He was tragically killed in an automobile accident during his senior year at the University of Notre Dame. I do not remember him but I certainly know how his death left a permanent scar on his mother. From my perceptions and interactions with my aunt for years after his death, my aunt never fully recovered from his death. As I grew up, I saw within her deep brown eyes the sadness and anger she carried throughout her life. She tried to cover up her grief since the family never spoke of his death at least in my presence. The public death opened deep wounds for her, wounds of grief that she would have rather kept secret. My aunt carried his public death and her secret grief all the way to her own grave.

I always sensed that my cousin’s success in college was an identity that my aunt cherished and even wanted for herself. His life and abilities covered up for her the past mistakes she had made in past marriages and her struggles to make a living. His sudden death ripped apart any pretense of her life, leaving her only the grief to form the rest of her life. The death of her only son on the cross of an automobile accident became a wound that she later carried and pondered in secret. The secret revealed itself in her anger toward other people, restlessness toward life itself. I learned from her anger and her hidden grief even as a young child. I learned the sacred bond of death between a mother and her child; the permanent scar never fully heals in the mother’s wound. My cousin’s death and my aunt’s grief carved an awareness within me that allows me to be attentive to other mother’s who grieve their children.

Jesus’ tragic and raw death on the cross in front of his mother must have devastated her. The public death became the fulfillment of Simeon’s prophetic words, the prophetic words that Mary had pondered in her heart all those years. His words that she had carried within her heart were now fully known among her family and everyone who had known Jesus. There was no hiding her grief. Her life was stripped of all pretenses and her future with her only son. The public accusations, the scourging and now his bloodied, dead body for all people to see on the cross were more than she could comprehend. I am sure she could not have imaged the cross on which her son hung in death.

            Several years ago I celebrated the funeral of a man who committed suicide. He was a year younger than me. He shot himself in his home. His family was aware of his long-term depression, everyone except his mother. She is the person I focused on as I prayed at the altar during the very emotional funeral. Her fiery, black eyes seemed to stand out to me from the packed church. These eyes were full of grief and unbelief that such a thing could happen to her beloved son. At the same time, her tear-filled eyes shown to the rest of us that her faith was being tested but her profound faith would still win out even through the death of her son.

She was elderly and could not grasp the severity of his disease or accept the fact that he could do nothing more to change his suffering. She thought he could snap out of his disease or just have happy thoughts that might ease his pain. This sobbing mother lived in another state and was not directly involved in her son’s daily anguish and pain. She could not comprehend that her son had been hanging on the cross of depression for more than thirty years.

The sobbing, sorrowful mother could not understand that her son had to die on the cross of mental illness. The stigma of mental illness still permeates the perceptions of many people including the mother of this man who took his own life. Many people believe that depression can be shaken off by pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, by getting hold of reality and getting busy or by believing in God more and focusing on the good qualities of life. However, this cross of mental anguish does not go away from these common beliefs. The anguished mother’s son died because this disease of depression overcame him. His death was not his fault.

The crosses on which many people die seem so unfair and untimely. In that same year, I also buried a twelve year old child who died of a horrific illness that slowly took away all of his muscle control. The disease began taking over his life just as he was old enough to leave the house and start school. His family showed him Jesus, surrounding him with compassion and teaching him of Christ’s love. This cross was so visible to strangers as they witnessed his contorted body. The pain in the family brought some to a deeper reliance on God and brought others to walk away from the Church. His cross will remain among his extended family, splintering his family for many years to come.

The painful vision of a parent witnessing the death of a child never fades into memory. Life is not supposed to be that way. Parents are to pass life on to their children and those children are to pass life on to the next generation of children. However, that is not the reality of life for so many parents who loose their child in death, in the many ways the cross reveals itself in our day and time.

I admit that I stand with parents at the death of their children as an outsider. I will never fully understand the devastating grief. I can only focus my gaze with Mary on the various crosses where people die and empty myself as Mary did in the belief that death does not win in the end. In the years that it takes for people to let go of love, on the relationship between Jesus and Mary can heal the grief of parents and families. I stand by and watch as a bystander waiting for miracles.

Mary’s sorrow reaches its pinnacle on Calvary. She journeyed through her son’s life hearing from Simeon that sorrow would pierce her heart and change her life. Her son is dead, hung on a tree for reasons that seem unfathomable and unreal. At the foot of the cross, she gives her entire life to God once again. Her questions become hidden among her tears and anguish. In the conclusion of a child’s life, any mother comes to silence in the weight of her grief.

Reflection Prompts:

How can Mary help you stand among events, circumstances and dreams that have died?

Whose death in your family or friends do you stand next to and grieve?

(On September 15, the Church celebrates the Feast of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady of Sorrows is the patroness of the Congregation of Holy Cross. I will be posting one of the seven sorrows each day leading up to the feast day. This is only part of a larger reflection that has not yet been published. The stories are meant to encourage your own reflection about each of the sorrows found in the gospels.)

The Fourth Sorrow: Mary meets Jesus on the road to Calvary

  Luke 23: 27-30

As they led him away they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country; and after laying the cross on him, they made him carry it behind Jesus. A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him. Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.’ At that time people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?” Now two others, both criminals, were led away with him to be executed.

 Standing next to suffering

One of the images I use in prayer as an adult comes from my childhood. The image seems odd and even a bit crass. I remember being sick many times with stomach flu. My mother would always wake up in the nighttime and come to the bathroom and hold my forehead while I was vomiting. As I look back on my young days, that gesture stands out to me as one of the most comforting and consoling. That human, maternal touch while I felt so vulnerable and helpless still comforts me in times when I feel out of control and not sure what to do next in life.

This simple gesture from my mother speaks to me about Mary’s role in Jesus’ suffering and death. Mary stood next to Jesus’ suffering and she could not control the outcome or take his pain away. Mary could not fix her son’s destiny and change the pattern of grace in Jesus’ life. Her role was to simply stand among the threats on Jesus’ life and among those who would eventually put him to death. Mary could only reach out to his hurting body and touch his human wounds.

At the end of my sophomore year in college, I was asked to become an orderly at Holy Cross House, our retirement center and infirmary next to the seminary. I began my junior year learning my new role as an orderly for our priests and brothers who were very ill and close to death. It became my turn to make sure I held the foreheads of these men when they were sick, to change their diapers and bathe them in a shower chair.

Sue was the head nurse at the time. She ran the infirmary with great care, intention and compassion. Her reputation had filtered down to the seminarians and even those of us who were just starting our many years of formation. I reported for my first day wearing my new scrubs. I was totally out of my element and my naïveté was obvious to every one. Sue welcomed me as if I had been working with the sick all my life.

On that first Saturday afternoon, Sue invited me into the room of one of our priests who had been in bed for over twelve years. He was a victim of a hit-and-run accident. He was struck by a car while riding his bicycle along the main road into campus of the University of Notre Dame. He was wearing his long, all-black religious habit that made him invisible in the darkness. The authorities never found the driver of the car.

The daily staff schedule of Holy Cross House revolved around the care of Fr. John. Every two hours a staff member fed, turned and comforted the silent priest. Even though he had been in bed for twelve years, he had never had bedsores. He did have drop foot, the muscles in his legs and feet collapsed. He had ground his teeth down to the gums from his anxiety. He could not speak or move. His eyes could not focus on the people who cared for him.

At 2:00pm, Sue introduced me to Fr. John. We spoke to him as we would speak to any person because even the doctors were not sure if he could understand our voices. She taught me how to change his diapers, bathe him and how to oil and powder his body. Then she took a feeding tube and asked me if I would help her feed him by inserting the rubber tube into the hole in his abdomen. I felt squeamish and unsure. I told her no, that I could not help her do that.

Sue reassured me, “That’s alright, we will try again next Saturday when you are working again.” So the next Saturday came quickly. At 2:00pm, Sue took me again into Fr. John’s room. We changed his diaper, bathed him, changed his sheets, oiled and powered his body. She then took the rubber feeding tube into her hands and looked at me. “Will you help me feed Fr. John?” I looked at the tube and the hole in his abdomen and quickly responded to Sue, “No, I am not ready.”

So Sue said again, “Do not worry, we will try again next week when you come back to work with us.” The next Saturday came along quickly, we entered Fr. John’s room one more time at 2:00pm. We bathed him, changed his diapers and his bed sheets. We oiled and powered his body. We fluffed his pillows. We prepared him for the next few hours of his life. Sue then took the long, rubber tube into her hands and asked me once again to help her feed him. The thought of feeding him almost made me sick to my stomach. I said, “No”.

Sue came over to me, took my hands into her hands. She came close to my body and looked me in the eyes. She whispered to me, “Ron, you must remember just one thing. Fr. John is your brother.”

I felt the grace of those words whisk through my body. I realized my spiritual connection to this helpless man. I felt the beginning of my call to stand next to suffering. I picked up the rubber tube and we feed Fr. John together for the first time. I will never forget the patience and dedication of Sue. She waited for me to finally understand that feeding him was not just about the tube and the food. I had to come to realize, that if I was going to enter into this religious community even as a young member, I needed to know that Fr. John and all of the ill men in that building were my brothers. I needed to be in relationship with them, to care for them even when they were old and very ill. I needed to learn to stand along side of their suffering. I also prayed for the day that someone would stand by me when I was old and ill and in need.

Nurse Sue stood by the suffering of so many of our priests and brothers. She also stood next to my youth and naïveté. Sue will forever model for me how to stand next to suffering, to wait patiently for the ways healing may happen among patients and caregivers. Sue modeled for me the central mystery of my vocation, to bring hope among people who are in pain and isolated, among those who carry the cross of suffering.

Reflection Prompts:

What does it mean for you to stand next to someone who is suffering?

How is God calling you to offer hope and consolation to other people?

(On September 15, the Church celebrates the Feast of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady of Sorrows is the patroness of the Congregation of Holy Cross. I will be posting one of the seven sorrows each day leading up to the feast day. This is only part of a larger reflection that has not yet been published. The stories are meant to encourage your own reflection about each of the sorrows found in the gospels.)

The Third Sorrow: The loss of the child Jesus in the Temple

Luke 3:41-50

 Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom.

After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it.

Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.

When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.

Searching backward to belong

 Jake sat across from me in a neighborhood coffee shop and slowly sipped his way through some horrifying moments of his story. While his coffee was still hot, he began to tell me that his mother sold him as a child to men for sex so she could get money for drugs. I noticed Jake’s hand beginning to tremble as he recalled the details he held only in his mind. I felt deeply humbled to receive even a piece of his story in the busy, music-filled room.

During the next several years over many cups of coffee, I learned more about his search to heal. Jake has searched his entire life to find his father and to put the broken pieces of his past together. He is so aware that those pieces are so shattered and devastating. Nevertheless, he wants to make sense out of his past, to finally feel and ponder the truth in his heart, no matter how painful the truth might be for him.

Jake was tortured and raped by many of those men that purchased him for sex. He was also bounced around to several foster families where the sexual abuse continued. His body carries the scars where men would beat him or tie him up. He was deemed “unadoptable” by the state as a child after he was gang raped in a barn by a group of teenagers. Jake still longs to find peace in his life after years of violence and neglect.

People made fun of him as a child because he was physically small and effeminate and so emotionally lost. Other kids called him, “Mary”. He was bounced around even over state lines and there was still no peace for him, no healing so that he could have a decent childhood. As Jake grew older, he became a heroin addict like his mother to escape his pain. His addiction was inevitable because that is all he knew growing up from the adults around him. He began to sell his body so that he could support his own heroin addiction. His adult life became a continuation of his childhood.

Jake found his way somehow to the Church as a young adult. His search for real parents led him to seek God. He found God through Mary. Jake came to believe that Mary would not abandon him. Jake knew that Mary had searched for her lost son. He wanted that for his own life. Jake discovered that Mary would search for him even when he was so wasted from drugs and alcohol. He believed that Mary could find him even on those nights that he had sold his body one more time. God drew him into the Church slowly and miraculously.

Jake overdosed on heroin just before his scheduled baptism at an Easter Vigil in a parish somewhere in the South. He was later washed in the Holy Spirit several weeks later during the Easter season after he had a few weeks of sobriety. To mark his entry into the Church, he had a large tattoo inked in elaborate calligraphy on his chest, “MARY.” This tattoo marked his body for the woman who walked with him to baptism, Mary the Mother of God. Jake’s tattoo was also a statement that he was claiming his own power from having been made fun of during his childhood. He wanted to own the fact that he had been made fun of and repeatedly called, “Mary.”

Jake turned to Mary because she could not explain to Jesus about his real, heavenly father. Jake believed that Mary would help him forget about his own mother and console him about not knowing and not understanding his biological father. He wanted a relationship with Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows because he wanted Mary to chase him down, to finally find him in his misery and call him back to his boyhood.

Jake’s adult life is consumed in hatred for his parents and his childhood. Jake’s suffering continues because he also lives with AIDS from the many years of sex and sharing needles. Jake is still addicted after many years of entering various recovery centers. His pain is too intense to forget. He holds on to Mary in his heart, however, even on the many days where his addictions scream at him to take his own life.

Jake’s story breaks my heart. I realize in the many years that I have listened to him that this scene of Mary and Joseph searching for the child has profound meaning across generations and places. The unexpected loss of a child for Mary becomes a rich and powerful story for so many people in our day and age that feel lost and separated from parents and family. This story is ongoing in so many people’s lives, especially for people who have been abused and neglected by their own parents.

I have no idea what happened to Jake. I do not know where his mother lives or if his father is still alive. I take to heart his story when I read again this Third Sorrow of Mary because the search for intimacy and union is life long; the search is profound in ways in which I cannot comprehend. Mary is the mother of a lost child, a broken relationship that lasts for even just a moment in time. The fact of this severed relationship offers hope to many people who search backwards in time to make sense out of their childhoods in order to find a place on earth in the present in which they can belong.

Reflection Prompts:

Have you ever been “lost” from a person you loved?

How do you turn to God when you feel lost from other people?

The Second Sorrow: The Flight into Egypt

Matthew 2:13-15

When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”

Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

The unimaginable dreams

 I occasionally preach parish missions and retreats around the country. Several years ago I found myself in a very large parish in California to preach the Masses on a weekend and then offer a three-day retreat. After one of the morning sessions, a gentleman cornered me in the sunlit lobby of the church. He whispered to me that his son graduated from the University of Notre Dame in the 1990’s. He then confessed to me that his son suffers severely from mental illness.

The father then went on to tell me that he had not seen his son for many years. The shy father, holding on tightly to a copy of the parish bulletin told me that his son had refused to admit his illness and would not seek medical advice or take the prescribed medications. The tired father sheepishly whispered to me that his only son lives, or rather survives, outside in a large wooded area somewhere in Indiana. He was not even sure where exactly his son was living or how he was surviving.

This father stood in front of me in this crowded lobby feeling so ashamed of himself that he could not help his son. He had tried for years to intervene in his son’s illness. I could tell by his whispers to me and by his manner that he was heartbroken by his son’s illness. He felt helpless to fix or solve the situation. This father was also heartbroken that the dreams he had for his son were shattered. The efforts, the money and the years of work in college were not being used for the good of his son’s future.

I asked him in the center of the crowd if he was able to share his concerns and his story with people in the parish. I asked if he received any emotional support from the parish community. He told me that he had not confided to anyone in the parish. His dream for his son would only be handed over in prayer. He also asks Mary continuously to protect him in his dreams that his son be safe.

The fragile father asked me to keep the dream alive for his son in my own prayer. After many years, I find myself responding to this request. I pray for him when I return to the University of Notre Dame when I ponder how so many dreams of parents for their children seem to rise up from the ground there. I remember those dreams from my own parents whenever I return to the area of my own birth.

The lonely father in that parish lobby certainly does not stand alone in his lost dreams for his child. Military parents send their children off to war and so many of their offspring do not come home and those who do come home are scared for life from the horrors of battle. Children flee from their parents to live their own lives and so many children lose their way into severe addictions or ill health. Some flee from family so they will come to terms with their own sexual orientation or the gifts and talents that were not fostered at home. Still others flee the country to try to heal from the abuse or loneliness that they found while at home with their families. Some children simply do not want to share the dream their parents forced upon them as children.

Joseph was able to respond to God in a dream to keep his infant son out of harm’s way. Jesus and Mary trusted that the dream was truly of God and for the purpose of safety. The future for the family was given to Joseph and he had the courage to act on his dream even if that led him to another country.

I cannot image how Mary must have received the news of her husband’s dream. The sorrow of fleeing the land must have pushed her trust in God to the limit. Even though the thought of leaving home shattered the family’s expectations about what the family would become, the dream had to be acted upon. This trust in the midst of threat and chaos would only make sense looking back upon their willingness to act on the dream in the moment.

Mary and Joseph still carry the lost or fragile dreams for parents. I hold on to the belief that when the original dreams of parents do not work out as planned, that the Holy Family cares for the children lost, alone and afraid in no matter what situations people find them selves. I hold on to the fact that Mary’s sorrow of flight invites mothers and fathers to continue their lives having to let go of control over their children.

Mary’s love for Jesus is still in our world today, amid the uncertainty of a child’s health or the unstable life of homelessness and mental illness. Mary and Joseph are still the caretakers for all the ways families are separated from home. They carry the love that needs to be shared when families need forgiveness and healing, love and mercy and in all the ways families need to come together in safety and security.

I cannot imagine the sorrow of this particular father entrusting his son’s life to God in such powerlessness. This unimagined dream must continue to lead us all into a new awareness of the issues that deaden the dreams of parents for their children. These unimagined dreams are the prayers that we must share in our parish communities and learn to live among us as believers.

Reflection Prompt:

How does Joseph’s dream inspire you to act on your life?

What do you suppose is God’s dream for your life?

(On September 15, the Church celebrates the Feast of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady of Sorrows is the patroness of the Congregation of Holy Cross. I will be posting one of the seven sorrows each day leading up to the feast day. This is only part of a larger reflection that has not yet been published. The stories are meant to encourage your own reflection about each of the sorrows found in the gospels.)

The First Sorrow: The Prophecy of Simeon

Luke 2: 27-35

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord and to offer the sacrifice of “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,” in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Messiah of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.” The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted^. (and you yourself a sword will pierce)^* so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. ”There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fast and prayer. And coming forward at that very time, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.

The dreaded first wound

            I first met Jane years ago shortly after an initial phone conversation. She called me because she had heard my voice during my radio program, “On the Margins”. She heard within my voice that my life was also broken, my life history physically revealing itself within my voice. She also immediately heard within my voice a place of trust, a time-out where she could rest her own words, the storytelling of her past. I knew from this initial phone conversation that her journey to faith was raw and authentic, that she was being led through her struggles by the gift of God’s undivided love for her.

Within our first few meetings, she began to unravel the circumstances that led her to first pick up the phone and call me. She started her face-to-face conversation telling me that she was in recovery from alcohol and drugs. Her recovery had been rather recent and her emotions that had been hidden by many years of drinking were now so raw and fragile. She was discovering her life over again, each lost memory and emotion coming to the surface after thirty years of drinking. She strung together one new memory after another with tears and fright, with prayer and longing to be set free as an adult.

She told me that she first started drinking before her fourteenth birthday. She started to sneak bottles of booze with her friends in order to hide the first wounds of her life, the profound wounds that she had carried well into adult life. Jane thought as a teenager she could well hide the childhood wounds of abuse at the bottom of many bottles. Jane never realized in her youth that the remedy she had used to hide her initial wound would some day become another wound, a disease that would overcome her entire life.

Jane came to talk with me even though she was not Catholic. She felt compelled to offer me some of the memories that had emerged in her new sober life after visiting a retreat center dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. One of her piercing memories, one of her deepest wounds, was losing her only son from a drug overdose. He died while she was still drunk. Now that she was sober, the grief for her boy was overwhelming. She felt for the first time the grief and the guilt that she had repressed for over five years since his death.

Jane told me that while she visited the retreat center she followed the path of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. Her heart began to connect to the pain of Mary who lost her only Son in death. She wept at each of the stations of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. She had never heard of these scriptural moments of suffering from Mary’s perspective before. She had never encountered Mary in prayer; in fact from her religious background Mary was always suspect and a bit superstitious.

Jane’s pain of losing her son was so intense that she decided to have an image of the Seven Sorrows of Mary tattooed on her chest. The pain in her heart was a deep itch that she could not scratch, a wound that seemed eternal. She believed that wound would never heal. She told me that when the tattoo artist started to carve the image deeply into her skin over her heart, that it was the first sorrow that hurt the most. She wept and wept lying on the table as the first sword, representing the First Sorrow, was engraved on her body. The first of the seven swords that surround Mary’s heart seemed to open her wound of grief and years of guilt. Jane also realized that once the first sword was tattooed on her body, there was no turning back. She new there was a deeper reason why the portrait of Mary was being tattooed on her delicate skin.

Jane’s tattoo of Our Lady of Sorrows became more than just an image of a mother losing her son. The tattoo was the beginning for Jane of opening up her own heart to the love that God had for her and the grace of Mary walking with her in absolute loss and confusion about her past and her future. Jane also confessed to me another reason why that tattoo hurt so much on her chest. The tattoo artist mixed some of the ashes from Jane’s dead son into the ink for the image of Mary’s heart. The tattoo over Jane’s heart also carried the death reminder of her only beloved son.

As I learned more from Jane about her story and her decision for the tattoo, there was one insight that she carried from the tattoo parlor into my office. She told me over and over again that the first piercing of Mary’s heart must have hurt the most. The first wound of hearing the voice of Simeon must have penetrated deeply into Mary’s heart that carved a place where the other wounds would live and form themselves into a deep trust in God. Perhaps this first ink image of the sword began to heal the first wounds of abuse and neglect in her life as well. The first wound in any life is deep and profound.

Simeon proclaimed to Mary after years of waiting and prayer that her Son would be the fall and the rise of many people in Israel. Mary’s first wound from the sound of Simeon’s prophetic voice must have created such a deep scar within her heart. His words like a sword, pierced deeply into her thoughts, her heart and her future. Mary’s first encounter with Simeon’s prophetic words became her dreaded first wound, “and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Reflection Prompt:

How do you interpret your own “first wounds” or the suffering you carry with you in life?

How are you inspired by Mary to carry the message of suffering within your own heart?