FEAST September 15
This feast, a patronage for all the sorrowing, honors Mary’s tribulations as Jesus’s mother. Blessed Henry Suso, a German mystic who lived 1295-1366, practiced devotions he called the Five Joys of Mary and the Five Sorrows of Mary. Father John de Coudenberghe, a parish priest in Flanders, began preaching a devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Mary in 1482. The Servites have celebrated this feast since the 17th century, and in 1814 Pope Pius VII made it universal. The biblically-based sorrows are: the prophecy of Simeon, the flight to Egypt, the boy Jesus being lost for three days, his adult ascent to Calvary, his crucifixion and death, his body being removed from the cross, and his body being entombed.