Mater Dolorosa

To the Mother whose heart was pierced.

The Church keeps 15 September, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross, as the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. Grief is given a feast day because grief is part of the Christian life, and the first person to live it fully was the Mother of God.

The Prayer

O most holy and afflicted Virgin,
Queen of Martyrs, who stood beneath the cross
witnessing the agony of your dying Son:
look with a mother's tenderness on me,
who kneel before you.

I venerate your sorrows,
and I place my requests with filial confidence
in the sanctuary of your wounded heart.

Present them, I beseech you, on my behalf to Jesus Christ,
through the merits of His most sacred Passion,
together with your own sufferings at the foot of the cross.

Obtain for me, through the united efficacy of both,
the fulfilment of my petition.
To whom shall I have recourse in my wants and miseries
if not to you, Mother of Mercy?

You have drunk so deeply of the chalice of your Son;
you can compassionate our sorrows. Amen.

About This Devotion

The Seven Sorrows are meditated in the Servite chaplet: Simeon’s prophecy, the flight into Egypt, the loss in the Temple, the meeting on the road to Calvary, the crucifixion, the descent from the cross, and the burial. People in grief often find this the one devotion that does not try to talk them out of it.