On ‘Passion Friday,’
Pope says he thinks of Mary’s 7 Sorrows when he prays evening Angelus
Francis invites us to thank Mary for agreeing to be
Mother - at the Annunciation and at the Cross
Hans Memling | Public Domain
In 2020, in the heart of the pandemic, Pope Francis focused
a homily on the special devotion that marks the Friday before Passion Sunday.
This day, known as Passion Friday, is a day the Church turns to the sorrows
suffered by Our Lady.
Today, Francis said, “it will do us good to think about Our
Lady's Sorrows and to thank her because she accepted to be a Mother.”
Pope Francis recalled that, “Christian devotion has
collected Our Lady's sorrows and speaks of the 'Seven Sorrows.'"
The first, he said, is “just 40 days after the
birth of Jesus, Simeon's prophecy that speaks of a sword that will pierce her
heart.” The second sorrow considers "the flight to Egypt
to save her Son's life,” while the third recalls, “those three
days of anguish when the boy remained in the temple.”
The fourth and fifth sorrow, he said, see
Our Lady meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary and his subsequent death on the
Cross.
Pope Francis noted that in the sixth and seventh sorrow,
Mary continues to accompany Jesus when he is taken down from the Cross and then
buried.
“It is good for me,” said the Pope, “late in the evening,
when I pray the Angelus, to pray these seven sorrows as a remembrance of the
Mother of the Church,” who, with so much pain, gave birth to all of us.
Mary as Mother
“Our Lady never asked anything for herself,” Pope Francis
reflected. “She did ask things for others; we can think of Cana. But she never
said, 'I'm the mother. Look at me. I'm the Queen Mother.' She didn't
ask something important for herself in the apostolic college. Simply, she
agrees to be Mother.”
She accompanied Jesus as a disciple, because the Gospel
shows that she followed Jesus: with her friends, pious women, “she followed
Jesus, she listened to Jesus.”
The Pope issued an invitation to “honor Our Lady and say:
‘This is my Mother,’ because she is Mother. And this is the title she
received from Jesus, right there, at the moment of the Cross.”
“Our Lady did not want to take away any title from
Jesus," said Pope Francis, “she received the gift of being His Mother and
the duty to accompany us as Mother, to be our Mother. She did not ask for
herself to be a quasi-redeemer or a co-redeemer: no. The Redeemer is one and
this title cannot be duplicated. Only disciple. And mother. And thus, as a
mother, we should think of her, we should seek her, we should pray to her. She
is the Mother in Mother Church. In the maternity of the Virgin, we see the
maternity of the Church that receives everyone, good and bad, everyone."
The Pope invited the faithful to thank Our Lady for being
a Mother:
Today it would be good for us to stop a little and think of
the sorrow and the pains of Our Lady. She is our mother. And [to think] of how
she endured [her sorrows] - how she carried them well, with strength, with
tears. They weren't false tears, it was her heart destroyed by sorrow. It would
be good for us to stop for a little and say to Our Lady: 'Thank you for
agreeing to be Mother when the Angel told you, and thank you for agreeing to be
Mother when Jesus told you.'
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