Pray the Seven Sorrows of Mary

Our Lady appeared to school children in Rwanda a few years before the Genocide. She told them about the coming genocide in very powerful language, telling them that the ground on which they stood would be red with blood.

She also told them a way out. “Pray the Seven Sorrows” she told them.

I had never heard of the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows of Mary until I read this story about the Rwandan genocide. The Marian visitation to Rwanda before the genocide has been approved by the Vatican, largely because the prophecies Our Lady made during the visitation have turned out to be horribly true.

After reading all this, I began researching and reading about this Rosary. But when I began to pray it, I found it to be one of the most painful prayer experiences I ever had. The suffering Mary endured for us is hard to contemplate. It hurts to do it.

It also strips away the shallow, name it and claim, God is my genie in a lamp, illusions of contemporary Christianity. We should never forget the price that was paid for our salvation.

If God could allow the Crucifixion of Jesus, if His own mother had to stand at the foot of the cross while he died and suffer the grief of that moment and all the moments after it, then we have no reason to expect that our lives will always be ponies and rainbows.

That’s the place you go when you pray the Seven Sorrows of Mary. This prayer shoves you up against the reality of the cost and the pain which purchased our redemption and eternal life. It also brings you soberly to the realization that when Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” he was not speaking metaphorically.