Each year, the Church’s liturgical calendar celebrates in succession the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14, followed the next day by the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows on September 15. This liturgical juxtaposition invites the Church to contemplate the inseparable bond between the glory of the Cross and Mary’s maternal solidarity while standing at the foot of the Cross.
The Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on the day St. Helena is said to have miraculously discovered the Lord’s Cross in the fourth century. The Entrance Antiphon for Mass introduces the major themes for the feast: “We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.” The Church rejoices in the triumph of Christ’s saving Passion, in which an instrument of death becomes the sign of victory and the means of redemption. The Collect for the day’s liturgy unites the salvific fruits won on the Cross and our participation in Christ’s Passion: “O God, who willed that your Only Begotten Son should undergo the Cross to save the human race, grant, we pray, that we, who have known his mystery on earth, may merit the grace of his redemption in heaven.” To know “his mystery on earth” is not merely to grasp a concept. It entails a real encounter with Christ’s Paschal Mystery through the liturgy. The Prayer over the Offerings makes this explicit by identifying the liturgical offering with the offering of the Cross: “May this oblation, O Lord, which on the altar of the Cross canceled the offense of the whole world, cleanse us, we pray, of all our sins.”
The next day, we turn from the wood of the Lord’s Cross to the sorrowful heart of his Mother. Originally a local feast, Benedict XIII extended the celebration of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the universal Church in 1721 on the Friday before Palm Sunday, connecting Mary’s sorrows to the sufferings of Christ. In 1913, Pius X transferred it to September 15, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross. The liturgy links Simeon’s prophecy that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart (Luke 2:35) with her intimate sharing in her Son’s suffering at the foot of the Cross. The Collect situates this memorial within the liturgical context established by the previous day’s readings, which reflect on Christ “lifted up” on the Cross: “O God, who willed that, when your Son was lifted high on the Cross, his Mother should stand close by and share his suffering, grant that your Church, participating with the Virgin Mary in the Passion of Christ, may merit a share in his Resurrection.” The Collect underscores that participation in Christ’s suffering is the path to sharing in his Resurrection, with Mary presented as the exemplar of this truth.
The successive celebration of these feasts draws us into the mystery of Christ’s Passion and Mary’s singular participation in it, reminding us that the glory of the Lord’s Cross and the com-passion of his Mother are inseparable in the economy of salvation.
Likewise, in the sacramental economy, the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice bears a Marian dimension that embraces the entire Church. Pope Saint John Paul II highlighted this Marian aspect of the liturgy in his 1988 Holy Thursday letter to priests:
When we celebrate the Eucharist, through our priestly ministry there is made present the mystery of the Incarnate Word, the Son who is of one being with the Father, who as a man “born of woman” is the Son of the Virgin Mary. There is no indication that the Mother of Christ was present in the Upper Room at the Last Supper. But she was present on Calvary, at the foot of the cross, where as the Second Vatican Council teaches, “she stood, in accordance with the divine plan (cf. John 19:25), suffering grievously with her only-begotten Son, uniting herself with a maternal heart to his sacrifice, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim which she herself had brought forth.” How far the fiat uttered by Mary at the annunciation had taken her! When, acting in persona Christi, we celebrate the sacrament of the one same sacrifice of which Christ is and remains the only priest and victim, we must not forget this suffering of his Mother, in whom were fulfilled Simeon’s words in the Temple at Jerusalem: “A sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35). They were spoken directly to Mary forty days after Jesus’ birth. On Golgotha, beneath the cross, these words were completely fulfilled. When on the cross Mary’s Son revealed himself fully as the “sign of contradiction,” it was then that this immolation and mortal agony also reached her maternal heart. Behold the agony of the heart of the Mother who suffered together with him, “consenting to the immolation of this victim which she herself had brought forth.” Here we reach the high point of Mary’s presence in the mystery of Christ and of the Church on earth” (Letter of Pope John Paul II to Priests on Holy Thursday, 1988, quoting Lumen Gentium, 58).
Celebrated the day after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows presents Mary as the faithful Mother who shares in her Son’s passion. Can we not also see in her a model of authentic liturgical participation? Mary does not offer the sacrifice in her own right, but she stands beneath the Cross united to her Son, attentive, receptive, and interiorly conformed to Christ’s own offering. In this, she exemplifies the disposition of the Church at prayer. The faithful offer the sacrifice with the priest as they “unite their hearts in praise, impetration, expiation and thanksgiving with [the] prayers or intention of the priest, even of the High Priest himself” (Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 93). “By offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 48). Mary’s presence at Calvary is not passive but actively contemplative (cf. Luke 2:19), the prototype of the active participation to which the Second Vatican Council called all the faithful, not merely through external involvement, but by an interior union with Christ’s sacrifice. As such, we can look to Mary at the foot of the Cross as a living icon of the Church at the altar, the perfect model of how to unite oneself to Christ’s offering in every liturgical celebration.
