All of Lent is an exercise in holy sorrow. We don’t know how to mourn as we ought – especially not our sins. So, we need these 40 days of penitence, to train us how to be sorrowful in the proper way. We need to learn genuine contrition. How not to skip over the gravity of our sins, nor to catastrophize them as if there were no Redeemer. To be sorry for our sins, not because we’re embarrassed by them (“I can’t believe I did that!”), nor only out of fear of Hell, but because they have hurt Him Who loves us perfectly – and so deserves to be loved.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled. That’s the Lenten Beatitude. We want to know how to mourn our sins, the sins of others, the fallen world, and most of all Christ Himself. We want to experience the blessedness of that kind of mourning that frees us from sin.
Blessed are those who mourn. . . . Jesus exemplifies this Beatitude. He is the One Who mourned first and perfectly. Last week, we heard that He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He did so because He had lost a friend, because sin has come into the world and, with it, death. But He also wept to give us an example of mourning.
For they shall be consoled. Jesus shows the Beatitude’s reward as well. By weeping at Lazarus’s tomb, He shows us how to mourn. By raising Lazarus from the dead, He gives an image and foretaste of the reward promised to all.
The Lord’s weeping for and raising of Lazarus prepares us for today’s account of His Passion, in which we encounter the perfection of His mourning and the sanctification of our own. In the Garden, Jesus announces the beginning of His Passion by saying, “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” God became man, He assumed our passible nature, so that He could suffer and die for our sins. It’s significant that the first suffering He experiences is sorrow of soul. “His passion has begun from within,” John Henry Newman said.
The cause of His sorrow is our sins. He is in agony, yes, because He anticipates the physical sufferings to come. But His greater agony is interior, in the sorrow He allows to rush in on Him on account of our rebellion against God. It is the sorrow of the holy One, Who knew no sin but was made to be sin. It is a sorrow exacerbated by our lack of sorrow – by our justifying, downplaying, or simply denying sin.
Blessed is He Who mourns. Jesus is the Man of Sorrows. He is also blessed – happy – because He is doing the Father’s will. Indeed, the reason He mourns is because He assumes the guilt and punishment for our sin in obedience to the Father. His mourning shows His oneness with the Father, His participation in the Father’s plan to confront and uproot sin.
For He shall be consoled. Jesus promises consolation to those who mourn. So also, He’s granted a consolation even in His Passion. The High Priest places Him under oath and commands Him to say whether He is “the Christ, the Son of God.” It’s the pivotal question, the very thing He has come to reveal and proclaim.
Perhaps in all His sorrow and pain Jesus experiences a slight consolation in this opportunity to solemnly affirm His identity. He joyfully confirms His Sonship and therefore reveals the Father too: “You have said so. But I tell you: From now on you will see ‘the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power’ and ‘coming on the clouds of heaven.’”
All of Lent is an exercise in holy sorrow. The sorrow we desire is summarized beautifully in the 13th verse of the Stabat Mater:
Let me mingle tears with thee,
Mourning Him who mourn’d for me,
All the days that I may live.
Mourning Him who mourn’d for me. . . .Blessed are they who mourn because the Blessed One has already mourned. We are blessed to be able to share the sorrow of the One Who sorrowed over us. We should mourn Him because His soul first became sorrowful even to death.
All that days that I may live. No, our mourning can’t always be as intense as it is during Lent. But such sorrow should be a constant in the Catholic life. Indeed, the more we deepen this sorrow for sin, the more we rejoice in – are consoled by – the Lord’s forgiveness.
Of course, this verse begins with a reminder that there is already one whose sorrow has been perfected by His. It’s to Mary we sing, Let me mingle tears with thee. We want to be united with her in her sorrow, to learn from her how to weep over Christ’s agony, which is to weep over sin.
In the Extraordinary Form, the Friday of Passion Week (the Friday before Palm Sunday) commemorates Our Lady of Sorrows. There’s a vestige of that Mass in the alternative collect for Friday’s Ordinary Form; O God, who in this season give your Church the grace to imitate devoutly the Blessed Virgin Mary in contemplating the Passion of Christ.
Such is the Church’s mind, that Mary’s sorrow has been perfected and that this week we should draw close to learn from her.
