The image of the sorrowful mother has been immortalized in Michelangelo’s statue of the Pieta, familiar to millions of tourists all the world over. It depicts Mother Mary with the corpse of her son Jesus across her lap. Mary is thus a symbol of countless women who have the misfortune of witnessing the death of their children, through war and violence, natural disaster and disease. The Sorrowful Mother is an archetype of our times. When the infant Jesus was offered in the Temple, the prophet Simeon predicted that Mary, the child’s mother, would have “a sword to pierce her heart”. And at various times in the life of her son, Mary experienced pain and anguish because of Jesus. How much she had to struggle to come to know who this boy really was, and what was expected of her. As a child she once lost him in the Temple. Then in Nazareth itself, the townsfolk wanted to lynch him. At different times the good people and the doctors of the Law ridiculed him, shouted him down, and even plotted his death. Rarely did she get to meet him during his public life, and once was even embarrassed when he said aloud, ‘Who is my mother?’ Its climax was of course, his brutal death on the cross. But that event also became the occasion for Jesus to share his mother with the whole world, through his disciple John. “Behold your Mother.” What does this feast say to us? It tells us that those closest to us – our parents, specially – share in the grief and pain which are part of our lives. No one is exempt from this. The closer you are to someone, the more you love, the sharper the pain. The Jesuit, Father Martindale put it in cryptic fashion when he said, “If you love someone, you’re going to be crucified. If you don’t love, you’re dead already.”