A Lost Art: Compassion (Part 4)

Apr 16, 2025 | 0 comments

By Mary Therese

5. Mary Stands Below the Cross:

What a model of strength our Lady is in the fifth Sorrow. There she was standing… standing at the foot of the Cross. Oftentimes Mary is depicted fainting in the arms of St. John, but I imagine it the other way. I imagine John leaning on Our Lady for support, leaning on her strong heart! I have no doubt she reached very near the end of her human strength at the death of Jesus. Our Lady stands with us when our strength is spent and our hearts pierced through with suffering. To say she was exhausted would be an understatement. I think the following words could also pertain to Mary: “Behold the Heart which has so loved men that It has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself in order to testify Its love.” What great faithfulness she showed her Son standing there by His side below the Cross. It is here we see the truest meaning of compassion, “to suffer with.” Like Our Savior, during our personal experiences of the cross, we do not want tears of pity from those around us, nor even someone to fix all our problems for us, but we desire someone to sit with us, to suffer with us, to enter into our pain. That is no little easy thing to do because each time we make ourselves available to another it requires us to sacrifice a part of ourselves, it calls us out of ourselves. After all, love is sacrifice. Our Lady didn’t go to Calvary just to weep. She went there to suffer and sacrifice herself with her Son. Our Lady makes herself available to us in the same way. She stands with us on all our crosses. She says, “I’m here. I understand, and you are so worth loving.” The more we realize that the suffering she endured for love of Jesus was also out of love for you and me, the more we realize how much she truly loves us. Who could not be moved seeing our Mother standing below the cross, with a heart full of sorrow and anguish, knowing she’s standing there for you.

On the hard days, I keep the image of Jesus Christ crucified and His Mother standing below the Cross in my mind. I look at Our Lord and with His last dying breath I hear Him say, “You are worth dying for.” And I look at our Mother and I see all her swords and I can’t help but see another one, the eighth one, which tells me that I am worth fighting for. She will fight all your battles for you — you only need to call upon her. She will help you remain steady, constant and strong in trials. Stay very near to her in this sorrow, lean on her, listen to the beating of her heart, to the song of her love for you. Stay with her a while to express your gratitude towards her. She too is in need of Compassion.

6. Jesus is Taken Down and Placed in His Mother’s Arms:

What preceded His body being placed in the arms of His Mother, I imagine, was one of the longest, most agonizing hours of her life waiting for the news of what would become of her Son’s body! Would His Sacred Body be further defiled by the breaking of His legs? What would become of the body of her Son? She knew the fate for common criminals. Their bodies would be thrown in a ditch outside the city in an unmarked grave. Would there be a tomb and proper burial for His Sacred Body?

The suspense of the unknown….

Where was Joseph of Arimathea with the news he had received? What was taking so long? She understands the agonizing pain of waiting, being in that “in between” space, that anticipation of the future and what it will hold. These difficult “in between” times of waiting often come after a series of sufferings. She knows that paralyzing fear. But do not fear, we will always fall into the arms of our loving Father and all will be provided for our next step, just as it was provided for His Son by the holy women… the linen cloths, sponges, water, frankincense, myrrh and spices. He will provide for you also.

Mary now holds the Flesh of her flesh, the Heart of her heart in her arms. How many times do we feel as though we are holding the dead broken body of Jesus in our arms? What are we holding in our arms…? Shattered dreams, unfulfilled desires, a broken heart or body, a weary mind, a wounded soul? Every spark of hope has left us cold and without life. Oftentimes, through the hurtful experiences in our relationships or with the world, the world gives us back to ourselves but it leaves us broken and wounded. Now we are left to clean up someone else’s “mess”. Oh, but Our Lady is here! She’ll take you tenderly in her arms as she did for her Son and wash all your wounds. Every wound she washes, she anoints and cleans with care. She caresses you most tenderly. She will restore your dignity, and by restoring your image, the image of your heart and soul damaged by this sinful world, she will reveal to you who the Son is. The Mother of Love will heal us and restore to us our relationship to the Father.

In the times of listless waiting there is also a time of healing. Surrender yourself into your Compassionate Mother’s arms, she will wash your wounds and prepare you for the next step God has in store. She wants to help you. To her, you are another Jesus! With child-like abandonment, entrust yourself to her and experience the profound tenderness of her love for you.

7. The Burial of Jesus:

The more loyal someone is, the more it hurts to say goodbye. This was the greatest test of Mary’s faithfulness. How could she walk out of that dark cold tomb and leave her Son there? She wished she could have buried herself with her Son. After all they had suffered together, she was asked to part from Him. Shared suffering bonds people together. Mary and Jesus shared one heart. For once He had gone where she couldn’t follow. He was her everything, He was her life, He was her light, and now somehow she was expected to walk away from the one thing she loved most. I don’t know how she did it. How she put one foot in front of the other and walked away. Somehow the whole world continued to go on when for her it felt like the world had ended. If there’s one thing I’ve learned (in my personal experience), it is that leaving is so much harder than staying, but it also requires much more strength and willpower to leave than it does to stay. So her departure from Our Lord’s tomb showed forth her strength and her fidelity, the tremendous sacrifice asked of her. She understands our deep hidden grief. Sometimes, following Jesus means walking away from the very thing we love most and sacrificing a whole life centered on Him alone and learning to serve and see Him in a new way.

Our whole world is turned upside down and we wonder if we’ll have the strength to get up in the morning. We ask ourselves, “How am I going to go on? How am I going to get out of bed in the morning and put one foot in front of the other?” Our heartache and sorrow, our crosses and pain, nothing, will make any sense without Him. Without Jesus and His glorious wounds and His Resurrection we can’t make sense of anything, especially without His Resurrection. That was Mary’s secret which kept her head above the dark waves of despair. Ask her to give you a daring Trust in His resurrection and your own.

As we know, her story doesn’t end here. There is a secret she clung to, a promise that lived in her heart! She trusted that soon the Resurrection would come and all would be made new. She hoped in the Resurrection of her Son and you can be assured that she is hoping in yours. How many lessons we learn from her on how to live, on how to love. We learn that her strength is in her compassion.

Our Lady of Compassion, Pray for us!

A Lost Art: Compassion (Part 3)

Apr 15, 2025 | 0 comments

By Mary Therese.

3. The Loss of the Child Jesus:

What dark days passed before Our Lord was found again. The void He left behind was unbearable. Our Lady would have turned at the sound of a young boy’s laugh, or the patter of feet or the call of, “Mater!” Every little thing she saw or heard that reminded her of Him must have haunted her. She desired to find Her son and be in His presence, then to live among the hundred little memories of Him.

Oftentimes when leaving the convent we can feel like we have lost Jesus, or He has left us. We lived a life that revolved around Him, but now that life has come to an end. Every part of our day, every action and intention was saturated with His Presence and done solely for Him. But being back in the world, it is often triggering, the smallest things make you miss those days so centered on Him. Our Lady understands what it feels like to lose Him, to lose the things dear to our hearts, our community, our Sisters, even our religious name. I think, especially for religious, whether inside or out of the convent, there is an almost torturous existence of perpetual desiring, but not yet grasping that desire. I know that day will come, but the fullness of it will only be realized in Heaven.

So much of Mary’s identity was tied in with who He was. What if these three days turned into a lifetime without Him? There’d be no young boy to look after, to feed and clothe. Her days would become empty. Her whole existence revolved around Him. What would she do, who would she be without Him? It is true we possess our identity because of who God is as Our Father. So it makes sense for a woman who has left religious life to question her identity when she becomes separated from that intimate life with God in the convent. When will those sweet days with Him return? But it is a mistake to believe He is not with us, that we cannot love Him just as much as we did. Just because eight hours of a day are no longer filled with prayer that does not mean He is absent in those unprayed hours. God does call us at times, like Our Lady, to serve Him in the darkness of faith, in the unseen, and in silence. Oftentimes He does so because He is trying to teach us to hear Him in a new way. Our Lady is near to those going through spiritual desolation, when we wonder where God is, why He is silent and absent in our moments of misery and pain. We ask, like Our Lady, “Why have You done this to us?”

There are probably many different reasons, but it all comes down to Love. I used to wonder why I felt like our Lord had walked out on me and I could not feel His presence or hear His voice during the two and a half months leading up to my leaving the convent. No comfort, no consolation, no peace, no presence in all that long difficult discernment. Our Lady understands that feeling. But I’ve also come to realize that “He had to leave”: He walked out that door before me, to prepare the way. It was necessary. And one day, He will reveal Himself when the time is right. One day the infant Jesus will come running through an open door into your arms and the sweetness of His Presence will fill the room like a heavenly perfume! And maybe, you will be the one who was found. I can’t wait for that day. But until that day, I will ponder all these things in my heart, in union with Mary.

4. Meeting Jesus on His Way to Calvary:

Our Lady must have experienced such powerlessness in that moment meeting her Son on the way to Calvary, barely able to recognize Him. She wished she could have taken the Cross and carried it herself and made it all better for Him, the way she had done for Him when He was a child. She knew He had a mission and trusted that there was a reason for all this. Though there was one thing she could give Him… her presence. She does the same for us. Jesus needed His Mother. We all need a Mother. We need someone to meet us where we are at when we feel like, or (more often than not) are a mess. We need someone to be our anchor. Sometimes our crosses can feel so heavy, almost unnecessarily. I like to imagine Our Lady ahead of Our Lord a few paces as He made His way to Calvary so that He could keep His eyes on her. She was the oil to His Lamp when the light of His Life was flickering lower and lower with every step. What new strength and courage the presence of Our Mother gives us in our trials. Mary also understands the pain of having your hands tied and not being able to alleviate the suffering of those around you. But as she teaches us, it isn’t so much what we do or say that expresses compassion for another, it is often just a look, a look of Love and a caring presence.

A Lost Art: Compassion (Part 2)

Apr 14, 2025 | 0 comments

By Mary Therese.

1. The Prophecy of Simeon: 

On such a joyful day, Our Lady’s heart was so full, so ready, filled with anticipation as she completed her purification and came to present Our Lord at the temple. It was a climatic day and the Holy Family came prepared, bringing two turtle doves that showed their humble poverty. But that day suddenly became clouded by the words of the prophet Simeon. And the first dolor pierced her heart…

We see a theme of preparation and offering in this Sorrow. We see in this Sorrow that Our Lady understands that feeling of bringing your whole heart, everything, before God, only to be met with an experience that shatters and rocks your whole world. This Sorrow, for me, harkens back to the experience of the young woman entering the convent as a postulant. We prepare our hearts, minds and bodies for that big day, when we will inhabit the house of the Lord. We come with a heart so ready and aglow for our Bridegroom! We hold in the arms of our heart Jesus, our greatest joy. He is the very reason we found ourselves there at the convent door. We also come with our “two turtle doves” — that is, we have only the clothes on our back and the few essentials needed for entrance. Our poverty is seen and literally worn.

Then one day we are met with hard news. Many of us never thought our joyous days in the “temple”, enjoying the Light of lights, would end so suddenly. As a young mother, Mary’s days turned bitter. She knows the heartache of receiving sudden difficult news, that shocking realization that nothing will be the same going forward. For some of us, our joy is turned into sorrow when we leave the convent. But Our Lady reminds us to cling to Jesus who is our Light and our Love, and that it is always worth loving Him even if it hurts, even if He calls us on a path we would not have chosen for ourselves.

2. The Flight into Egypt:

In this Sorrow, Our Lady finds herself packing up her few essentials and leaving the comfort of her home. Poverty, hunger, and uncertainty closed in around her.

She found herself in a foreign land among strangers. Her travels, as she fled into Egypt, I imagine, were extremely difficult. What tremendous trust it took to step into the unknown. What a risk that was to take! There was no looking back. Only ahead and only at the Little One pressed against her heart! She knows what it’s like to face the world with all its unknowns and be plagued with the fears of the future.

Sometimes after we have made a choice, we ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? I can’t believe I’m leaving the convent! Why would I do this? Am I out of my mind? Why would anyone put themselves through this?” But I have always found that the answer was love, even a healthy love of self, for the sake of one’s soul.

Our Lady probably found herself sleeping in less-than-comfortable conditions, with the mule for warmth and a lantern for light. If anyone else were in her situation, lying on the cold desert sand staring up at a starry sky rather than a roof, they would have asked themselves, “Why am I doing all this… putting myself through this?”

Then comes Love’s gentle reproach.

I remember thinking something similar, after I left the convent. It was another restless night as I lay there in bed, as I brushed my hand over my very, very short hair, in disbelief that I was no longer a Sister. Maybe I could have spared myself so much suffering and heartache, so much humiliation and loneliness, so many stresses and worries, so many painful adjustments, so many goodbyes… so much grief! If only I had stayed, I would have been spared all this! (But I knew that the alternative of staying would have been painful in a different way.)

In response to this, I’d say, “Jesus! I wouldn’t do this for anyone but You! BELIEVE ME, I wouldn’t go through all of this for anyone but You!” I know Our Lady would have said something similar in difficult times. I can imagine the devoted, boundless love she has for you and me. Every time she swaddled Our Lord, she wrapped us in her mantle: “For you, my child,” she’d whisper, thinking of you and me, exclusively. She listens closely to all our troubles and heartaches, tells us how proud she is of us, and how Jesus will reward our love and loyalty beyond all our expectations! Oh, how He can’t wait to crown His brides!

A Lost Art: Compassion (Part 1)

Apr 13, 2025 | 0 comments

By Mary Therese.

Over the years, I’ve come to know a woman with a very inspiring story.

No one would have guessed that this woman of few words with the perpetual smile was suffering so intensely day to day. It all started when she was a teenager. I can’t imagine the tremors that tore through her young heart when she was told that suffering would be her “lot in life” … and that there was no cure, nothing to numb the pain. The daily anticipation of that pain was her greatest suffering, and from it she wasn’t free.

Then, when just a young mother, she was faced with poverty, hunger, and uncertainty, and was on the brink of losing everything, even her home. She risked her own safety and comfort to protect her newborn child and stepped out into the unknown to find a place of support, safety and peace, far, far away from the looming dangers they had left behind. In the midst of being homeless she had such tremendous trust in God and His protection!

Her husband was her sturdy rock, and his prudence and fidelity eased her pain. He did all he could to provide for her and his son. Soon they settled down and had a place to call home. While she went about her household duties, she could hear her son and his father working in the distance together. But so often, when she was alone, she was overcome by her suffering. Silent tears of pain rolled down her face and neck. How many times her tears were found mixed with the dirty laundry water, or in the dough she kneaded, or on the floor she cleaned. But she suffered it all out of love for her child. It was her strong, maternal heart that kept her going day after day when she was tempted to give up. Mysteriously, her tears were paving a way and a life for her child and for so many more.

Her story goes on to tell of the heart-stopping moment when she realized her son was missing! For days and nights they searched for him, only to find him safe and sound. She praised God! Years passed, and her boy grew to reach manhood, healthy and strong. She still remembers the day he left the family home. Their encounters were always treasured.

Then, one fateful morning while making her way through the squalid lower streets of the city, she met her son. He was unrecognizable… and she discovered he was in the company of thieves and murderers! As much as she wanted to take control of the situation and be his savior, she knew she had to trust God and His plan. And she trusted again in His plan, when her only son was betrayed by his friend and brutally murdered before her eyes… and again, when she had to bury him with her own hands outside the city. For the second time, she had lost him.

Somehow, she walked away from that grave. She put one foot in front of the other and walked away from the one thing she suffered for and loved most. She trusted in God’s plan, even when nothing made sense. All her life, this woman, in the midst of her deep suffering, continued to care for, counsel, serve and guide those around her. She became a strong rock for those around her to lean on. This woman never let her suffering make her bitter; instead it made her tender and compassionate. This woman is my Mother.

She is your Mother too! She is the Queen of Sorrows, and yet the cause of our joy!

I can’t talk enough about our Lady of Sorrows. In 1482 she was originally entered into the Roman Missal under the title of Our Lady of Compassion. I prefer to call upon her under that title, because, like all of us, I am in need of Compassion. I want to look someone in the eyes and know that they get it! If there is anyone that gets it… it is her. The more I meditate on her Sorrows, the more I discover why she is the most compassionate and loving of mothers. Not only do I find myself even closer to her strong radiant heart, but I find that she is also teaching me how to live and how to love… after all, the way we live is how we love. In my opinion, Compassion is a lost art, but Mary is here to teach us.

Over the next few days of Holy Week, I’d like to lead you through each of her Sorrows and show you that she completely understands whatever you’ve been through or are going through right now.

Image credit: Syrio, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons