There are a lot of advantages to reading Catholic books published pre-Vatican II to see how and what the Catholic Church taught as far as devotions go. For instance, I read the following tonight at Mass:
"At the beginning of reading of the Gospel, when we're standing, both the priest and the people make the sign of the cross; first upon their foreheads, to signify that they are not ashamed of the cross of Christ and his doctrine; secondly, upon their mouths, to signify that they will ever profess it in their words, and thirdly upon their breasts, to signify that they will always keep it in their hearts."
This is from an 1878 manual of spiritual exercises. I always thought that this was a new thing in our Church - new as in after Vatican II.
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Our Sorrowful Mother
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With this country in the worse shape it's ever been in, and with, IMO, the worse president we've ever had, I want you to think about your own sufferings because of all of this and consider this for a minute. According to our Holy Church when recalling only seven of Our Lady's sorrows, the sufferings of the Mother of God cannot be comprehended. Her life, like that of her Divine Son, was a continuous series of sufferings and tribulations. Mary had her own way of the cross and not one person who has ever lived on this earth suffered like she did, other than her own Son, Our Lord .
After reading this, I began to think about how selfish I am, especially when it comes to the daily sufferings we all have, which are small in comparison. We get an sore toe or a headache or break a bone or something and it's like the worst thing ever. OR worse yet, we lose a spouse, parent or child and have to face life alone without that person until eternity, IF we make it to heaven.
The purpose of the Devotion is to promote union with the sufferings of Christ through union with the special suffering that Our Lady endured because she was the Mother of God. By uniting ourselves with both the Passion of Christ and His holy Mother, we enter into Jesus' Heart and honor Him greatly; He is more honored because we have so honored His Mother.
So I'm thinking about trying to begin a devotion to Our Sorrowful Mother. I know others have done this devotion and have liked it a lot. There are so many devotions we Catholics can do, but to specifically pick something out that touches our heart takes some thought sometimes. We know that the devotion to the rosary is the best one of anything. The Sorrowful Mother devotion teaches us the sorrowful mysteries of Mary from the Gospels, which we really don't hear that much about other than the two feast days the Church has in honor of the Sorrowful Mother - the Friday before Good Friday and September 15.
There are two different devotional prayers for this devotion. To read about the devotion and to pray the Rosary of Tears, follow this link.
http://www.catholictradition.org/Passion/tears.htm
To read the devotion to and pray the seven dolors (sorrows), follow this link: http://www.catholictradition.org/Mary/7sorrows.htm
