“Let me mingle tears with thee
Mourning Him who mourned for me
All the days that I may live.”

The Stabat Mater, the Sequence for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, is one of our greatest liturgical hymns; we also sing it by devout custom at the Stations of the Cross. In it, we accompany Our Lady on the way of the Cross.

Our Lord loved us from all eternity, but in His sacred Passion, he loved us “to the end” as St John put it, to the ultimate limit that any love could be expressed in human terms. Wounded by our own sins, He poured out His life blood to redeem us from them.

When we think prayerfully of the sufferings of Christ in His Passion, we should be moved, but our hardness of heart can allow us to become over-familiar with the events of the way of the Cross. Wisely, the tradition of the Church allows for Our Lady to help us as we consider also the sorrows that afflicted her Immaculate Heart. We call her “Mother of Mercy” and we know that even though she is aware that we have caused her son suffering by our sins, she pleads with Him for forgiveness.

Our Lady can also help us to grow in the spiritual life by doing more than the minimum that is required of us, or by being more generous in the extra things that we do. She also helps us to keep our focus on Jesus Christ, instead of making our participation in the life of the Church simply another consumer activity in which we seek entertainment. She helps us to know that we stand in need of God’s mercy.