A MEDITATION FOR THE ANCIENT FEAST OF
THE SEVEN SORROWS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE GOOD FRIDAY
by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
One of the most horrible aspects of the liturgical wreckage wrought in the name of Vatican II was the cancellation of the ancient feasts which had great power to move the hearts of the faithful in remembrance of Christ’s Most Holy Passion.
Today is such a feast day. It is the Feast of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. Placed today, on the Friday before Good Friday, it served to provide an opportunity for the faithful to share in the remembrance of what Our Lady suffered when She heard that the High Priests had ordered the arrest of Jesus and all the other sorrows which would follow from that, without neglecting the sorrows She had already endured in Her life long devotion to Her Divine Son.
And if you would like to read more about the power of Our Lady’s tears, I wrote an article about it in December, 2019: In Her tears, the Church can find salvation from apostasy.
But this year, I think most of us can understand personally in a much better way the greats anguish and suffering which struck at the Immaculate Heart of Mary when She heard that the High Priests had arrested Jesus.
That was the ultimate rejection of Her Son by the supreme institutionalized religious authorities of Her day. It was the perfect act of treachery by men whose religious duty was to uphold the Covenant of Moses, which forbade the arrest or accusation of a just man, and to await for the Messiah and receive Him.
By this act, Our Lady and the faithful disciples would be deprived of the preaching of Jesus and the presence of Jesus. He would longer be there to absolve them of their sins, to heal their sick, to be near their loved ones in death, He would no longer be there at their marriages, nor at their baptisms. He would no longer be there to lay his hands on the little ones, to confirm them in the Holy Spirit, nor upon men to ordain them priests.
And we today are in the same predicament as Our Lady of Sorrows.
Because by our Bishops we have been deprived of the preaching of Jesus in His priests. We have been deprived of the presence of Jesus in His Sacrament and through his priests. We have been deprived of the forgiveness of our sins by Jesus in His priests, we have been deprived of the last rights from Jesus in His priests. We have been deprived of Baptism by Jesus in His priests, we have been deprived of confirmation by Jesus in His priests. We have been deprived even of our priests, who now hunker away in hiding.
In the English language, this meditation is easier, since the word, “arrested”, means actually ‘to stop’.
Alas, though artists have excelled in depicting the sufferings of Jesus Christ in all their anatomical perfection, nevertheless, they still have not succeeded, in my opinion, in capturing the anguish which tore the Immaculate Heart of Mary asunder and disfigured Her Immaculate Visage with grief, when She heard these words: The High Priests have arrested Jesus!
This year, we need to look at our own conditions and recall what Our Lady suffered: The High Priests have arrested Jesus. And where will we go to find Him?
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Our Lady warned us that we would be abandoned by our clergy and condemned to be without the sacraments of Our Lord. That day appears to have arrived.
Whether this a temporary wake-up call or something more permanent is unknown. But what we do know that since Vatican II our clergy has mostly fed us inauthentic Catholicism and most Catholics have drifted far from our orthodox faith.
Reblogged this on CONTRA HOSTES TUOS.
Beautiful way of placing our current situation in the scenes of the Gospels. The Sanhedrin was comprised of arrogant, lawless, idle, avaricious, men that were cloaked with an appearance of law, justice and authority. Little did they know they were judging the Supreme and Eternal Priest of the Most High.
Today, the Sanhedrin is the College of Bishops who have forgotten that the Host they’ve incarcerated or put in “quarantine”, is the same Body and Blood of the Supreme and Eternal Priest of the Most High, who granted them their very office and purpose. They are WORSE than the Sanhedrin of old.