Meditating on the Second Sorrow of the Blessed Mother

First Sunday of Lent

February 18, 2024 •

 

The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Seeking our Lady's Intercession. Let us pray.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

the Lord is with thee

Blessed art thou among women,

and blessed is fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners

now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

 

Good morning, brothers and sisters. So, thank you for your prayers. Thought I'd give everybody an update on my health. My doctors think it's a problem with my gallbladder. They're probably going to recommend surgery, but it's, they say a minor surgery, so it's not that big a deal. They think I have gallstones and that's why I've been sick the last couple of weeks. Just keep it in your prayers and I'll keep all of you posted. I appreciate that.

For those who weren't able to make it on Ash Wednesday, this image that I have displayed on the altar, you can go on our website and listen to that. The beginning of that homily, I explain the image. It's very beautiful and we're consecrating and blessing the image by leaving it out on the altar will do that during Lent and probably during the Easter season as well. Over the next several weeks, I'll be preaching to you about the seven Sorrows of Mary. Last week we spoke about the first of her sorrows, which is when she and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple and the Prophet Simeon prophesied that not only would our Lord suffer, but our lady would suffer along with him.

Today, in meditating on the second sorrow of the Blessed Mother, we remember her and Joseph's flight into Egypt. If you remember when Jesus was still very young, after the wise men had come to Jerusalem seeking the new King of Israel, they went to Herod and asked him where the king was. They figured the King of Israel wouldn't know where the new king is. And Herod was a little surprised by this. And he got the wise men that the scholars of the law and they told him he was to be born in Bethlehem.  He sent the wise men to Bethlehem and they found Jesus and gave him gifts. But Herod wanted to know who this Jesus was so he could have him killed. So obviously the Lord told the three wise men, the Magi and Mary Joseph, that Herod was going to try to have the child killed. And they got ready and they fled into Egypt and then Herod had all of the young boys, two years and younger, massacred in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas, just in case he thought he would have definitely be able to kill this newborn king. This song in particular is fairly obvious because here we have the prophecy of Simeon being fulfilled. Early on in the life of Christ, he's just been born.

 

He's still a baby and already someone is seeking to kill him. Mary sees at the very outset of the life of Christ this, this fulfillment. And she, as you can imagine, must have grieved very greatly that anyone would want to harm not only her baby boy, right, but the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior, and Christ. We can obviously see that kind of grief and sorrow out of her love for not only God, but also her own child who just happened to be the same thing. But there was another sorrow that we don't often consider. And I want you to imagine the grief that Mary experienced when she heard about all the dozens, if not hundreds of young boys that were slaughtered because of her son. It's one thing to suffer over your child. That's in danger of suffering or death. But imagine how all these other families must have endured such agony, all because Christ was born in Bethlehem, all for that reason. Imagine the test that must have been to Mary's faith. You know, why would God allow this? Obviously, God told Joseph and Joseph got Mary and Jesus out of there. Why didn't God do that for the rest of the families with little kids? Now, Mary, having perfect faith, obviously trusted in the Lord's plan, whether she understood it or not. Now, to understand the reasons for why these things had to happen, they had to happen. They weren't optional. They had to happen to Christ. To understand this, you have to understand the entire history of God's people. Because for any true Jew, one of the greatest events in their history, both tragic and wonderful, is when in Egypt, Pharaoh had all of the sons, all of the little boys who were born of the Israelites slaughtered, he had them slaughtered because he was worried that the Israelites would rise up against him. You could let the women live, he said, but kill all the young men. Of course, that led to Moses being cast in a basket on the waters saved by Pharaoh's daughter, raised in the palace, and eventually delivering God's people through these great signs and wonders, and then bringing them through the desert to the promised land. This is the most significant event in the life of the Israelites, where God deliver them from slavery and Egypt.

Now, since the death of all these young children happened to the Israelites long ago, since they had to go into Egypt, they had to flee from Egypt. Our Lord Jesus had to experience those exact same things. This is one of the mysteries of our faith that people don't meditate upon enough. Everything that happened to the Israelite people of old had to happen to Christ, and everything that happened to Christ has to happen in one form or another to every future Christian in redeeming us. Jesus Christ conformed himself to our nature and not just to our nature as human beings, but to the very experiences that we have in our own lives. The only way the Israelites could truly accept him is that if that he himself endured everything they endured, and even more so, our Lord chose to live this life as a mirrored image of the life of His people.

To show, See, I'm one of you. I know everything that you know. I've experienced everything that you've experienced and more. And yet this same truth applies after the fact to everyone who is supposed to be conformed to the life of Christ. If you and I are to be conformed to the life of Christ, that means we're conformed to the life of Israel old because Christ was conformed to their life. This is one of the essential aspects of salvation. We see this in the lives of the saints. The greater the saint, the more perfectly their life in one way or another reflects the life of our Lord. That's why these seven Sorrows of Our Lady, which are the stars of Christ himself, are so important to us. That's why our meditations upon them are so necessary because they enable us to understand our own life. Why is this happening to me? And that's the question we ask whenever we're suffering, right? Why is this happening to me? What did I do? Well, I mean, sometimes we know what we did. We send. But sometimes you might not have done anything wrong in that situation and you're still suffering. If we are truly to be one with Christ. And that's. That's the goal here. That's the whole point of the church. And there are teachings in the sacraments that we must be conformed to every aspect of his life. There will be times in your lives, like the first start in which you'll be told that you have future suffering ahead of you. There's a cross you have to learn to bear patiently. You can do that best with our lady. She understood this well. There'll be times in your life in which your children, in one form or another, will be threatened or in danger. You have to flee from your own land, your own home job, family situation, whatever it is, in order to protect them, suffer because of that. We saw that in the life of our Lady in Christ. There'll be times in your life when your children are the cause of great suffering for others, like the loss of all of these poor children in Bethlehem. And you'll have to endure that as well. You'll see as we go through all of the seven sorrows in some form or another, how your own life will conform to them and the more you meditate upon these great mysteries, more you keep them in mind. It's not going to lessen your suffering at all. Not one iota, not one bit. You will continue to suffer just as much, but you will see that you are not alone. You'll see that this has already been done before. In the Old Testament, it was done perfectly in the life of Christ don't ever be surprised that it's in your life as well. And you won't despair. You'll have faith, you'll have hope, and you'll be able to endure whatever comes, knowing that it will pass away in the end. Ultimately, as you know, as will go through the seven sorrows, clearly death is the end of all suffering. Final thing that we must all endure at one point in this life. No one can avoid that. And yet our Lord doesn't want us to fear any suffering. That doesn't mean we run after it, you know, go out and seek suffering. That's a psychological illness. You know, you can get treatment if you have that, but it means whenever it comes to us, we should not assume that this is not part of God's plan.

That should be the assumption. God has a plan for me. And the more I can keep my mind and heart focused on our Lady and Christ and their suffering, the easier I will be to allow that grace of the Holy Spirit to strengthen me, to endure these crosses that always come during Lent. I want us to practice the creed in Latin, so we'll be reciting it during the season of Lent, hopefully. Maybe during Easter, we could start singing it. But do we have the page number for the Creed? Page 26 In the Blue Book in the St Michael Hymnals we'll do the creed in Latin, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

 

Homily begins at