The lesson of Our Lady of Sorrows, who is honored this week, is that from disaster can come happiness and from grief joy. It's up to us. It's a matter of persevering.

Look at Mary: she didn't run away from the Cross. She did not avoid the greatest personal calamity anyone could endure. She didn't choose to shield her eyes as her Son was crucified.

The Blessed Virgin Mary persevered to the end and in short order lay witness to His Resurrection.

As a result, all generations will call her "blessed" and so too are we blessed when we persevere. If we detach ourselves from negative emotions there is always glory after the sadness. It's up to us to make the cycle of gloom a short one!

For such are the trials of life that we have good times and bad times, excellent days and ones that are terrible. Yet equally true is the rule that from disaster is always the potential for something good.

Such is true whether in huge calamities like Katrina or issues in our personal lives: When God allows disaster, He is hauling away the rubble, clearing brush, and offering us space for a new structure.

Sorrow, yes; we experience that; the Blessed Mother did. But her sorrow was not obsessive. It was not morbid (as we see too often at funeral homes). It was not a depression that lingered. And it did not equal despair.

For we despair only when we lose sight of Heaven -- and Mary never lost sight of the supernatural.

That only happens when we overly focus on things of this world. We despair when we listen too much to what the world has to say. It is the world that sees only the physical. It is the world that tells us to lament. It is the world that loses sight of Heaven. It is the world that tries to make one person more important than the next (causing despair this way also).

To detach from that is to transcend it -- and to transcend sorrow along with it!

Do you care what kind of car a neighbor drives? Do you care what society thinks of you? Do you follow the secular news as the definition of reality?

Do you still read more secular than spiritual material (more in the way of newspapers than in the way of the Bible)?

It is the judgment of the material, human-centered, egoistic world that causes vacancy. It is the judgment of the world that leads us to jealousy. It is the judgment of the world that brings over-sadness.

When we are suffering those things, it is often because we still have not shaken off the attitude of the world -- which wants us to put Man in the place of God and live as if earth is the final destination.

Sadness lingers only when we hold too long onto something and view it with worldly eyes instead of lifting our eyes to God.

Ask the Blessed Mother!

After the Sorrowful Mysteries come the Glorious ones.

That's her Rosary, and with it sadness disappears.

09/16/05

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