Mary transforms our tears into joy

An appeal to those who suffer

Brother who weeps, sister who suffers, listen. There are in the Kingdom of God mysterious seeds from which joy blossoms. It is a joy pure as the skies washed clean by the rain, gentle above every human feeling, a full joy that the world cannot understand and cannot disturb or take away.

The fruit of the mysterious seeds

From these mysterious seeds ripen fruits of peace, of serenity, of a consolation so intimate, so deep, so unalterable that it can only be divine. Do you want to know these mysterious seeds of joy? Do you know them? They are fragile as the drops of dew that hang on the little green leaves and shine in the morning sun. They are hidden like the precious pearl and the treasure buried in the field of which the Gospel speaks. They are bitter as the drops of the sea, they are abundant as the rain of heaven, they are as familiar to you as the water that quenches your thirst and the bread that feeds you, like the brook that from your window you see or hear running down below at the bottom of the valley.

The true nature of tears

Do you know what these mysterious seeds of joy are? Brother who weeps, sister who suffers, they are your tears of sorrow, the tears that well up in your eyes, often irrepressible, that rise from your anguished heart, that run silently over the bed of your sufferings, that are day and night a bitter food for you in the perhaps inviolate solitude of your poor and unadorned room.

The value of pain and suffering

So that they may not be lost, gather these seeds of joy in the concave cup of the hands that cover your face, raise them as in a chalice to heaven upon the altar of your daily sacrifice, and scatter them over the heart of God, over the heart of the brothers you love, so that they may bear fruit, as in the good and excellent soil of which the Gospel speaks, a hundredfold.

The universality of suffering and the promise of consolation

When it seems to you that you are the only one suffering, consider that every man who comes into this world is like the sower who goes out at the dawn of his day to do the sowing. His tears fall now upon the barren stones, now among the withered thorns, now upon the crushed dust of the road, now upon the closed ground of his own heart, now, as befits sons, upon the very heart of the Father: God. If you know how to suffer and to weep as befits one who by grace has become a son of God, if you know, that is, how to scatter your tears upon the Heart of the Father, if you know how to hide them and mingle them in the pierced Heart of the Mother who, though blessed, knew weeping, you too become blessed, because then your weeping blossoms into joy.

The call to hope

Jesus, the Son of God made man, could have chosen joy for Himself in this world, and yet for your love and comfort He chose the Cross, that is, sorrow and weeping, and He wrote them into the constitution of His kingdom of beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”. Your soul too will receive the gift of consolation if it knows how, like Him and with Him, to spend the treasure of its tears. Yes, the psalmist distinguished the times of weeping and those of joy, comparable to the sowing and to the harvest. The present life is the time of sowing, the life to come is the time of harvest: “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy”. Just like the reapers of this earth, who distill sweat and tears when they stretch out their arms to the sowing and who break into a song of joy when they hasten to the harvest of the golden sheaves.

The transforming power of tears

O you who suffer because you are sick, persecuted, abandoned, betrayed, disinherited, or who in your poverty feed on your tears as on bread and water. Do not let fall in vain, do not scatter into the emptiness of time these seeds of life and of happiness that are your tears, the pains of your body, the anguish of your soul, but with a spirit of faith and with a loving conformity to the Divine Will, hide them in the merciful Heart of God, where they will bear you a hundredfold of consolation and joy for today and for eternity. If the hope of the harvest lies in the seed, in the quality and in the quantity of the sowing, so too it lies in the shrewd diligence of the sower and in the goodness of the soil and in the increase that God gives to the work of man. He who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, he who sows abundantly will reap in abundance.

Do not despair if your afflictions are many, or if the time of your exile from the true homeland is prolonged, if many sorrows or enemies besiege you like waters that lash the perhaps parched rock of your body or of your soul. Now that you know this, do not waste a single tear, nor a single minute of your suffering. They are the gift, the treasure of God, the very joy and happiness of God offered for you to win. The coefficient that transforms and gives value, in the creative process of joy and of happiness, to your humble and bitter tears is faith, love, humility, patience and, remember always, the generosity with which you accept and offer your suffering to God, with which you carry, praying, your cross: with all of this you increase, with God’s help, the flowers and the fruits of your sorrow, which is transformed into joy.

Now you understand why you must not despair under the weight of your cross, but hope and love and, if you can, even now enjoy its consolation! Do you see, brother, how the spirit of faith and the soul of love that you put into your suffering on your part, and mercy and grace on God’s part, transform, give value to, and ennoble the apparently useless days, the apparently barren sorrows of your life as one who is sick, persecuted, slandered, hated for the sake of justice and of the name of Christ? Do you see how patience is necessary for you, so that the mysterious seeds of your tears may blossom into joy?

Look to Mary and to her tears

Now perhaps you understand well the reason why Mary weeps. You understand why the Mother of the God-Man, the Most Holy Virgin, could not fail to have recourse to this mysterious source of life that is sorrow, thus becoming herself almost a full and overflowing fountain.

Contemplation of the sorrowful Mother

Contemplate your Sorrowful and weeping Mother!
If the whole life of Christ was one of cross and martyrdom, so too was that of His Mother one of piercing and of weeping, for love of us and because of our sins, from the first fiat of the Annunciation to the last fiat spoken at the foot of the cross where she stood lacrimosa, the cross from which her Son hung!

Mary, the source of beatitude

She whom all generations would call blessed could not fail to seek at this supreme source of beatitude, revealed by the hand of God from this created clay of our humanity, that is, at the source of sorrow and of the tears sanctified by the Son of God, made our brother in sorrow and in tears in order to redeem us from sorrow and weeping, from sin and death.

Invocation to Mary the consoler

Therefore you must invoke as the consoler of your sorrow the Mary who wept, call upon her as the Mother of all tenderness in your sufferings as a son, imitate her as a wise and strong Teacher in the dark and difficult hours of your earthly journey.

Offering tears through Mary

Offer this very day, through the hands of Mary, your tears together with hers to divine Justice, in a spirit of purification for your soul and of reparation for the sins of your brothers. Offer, together with the blood of the divine wounds of Christ, those of your wounded body and of your torn heart, in union with the torments of the Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart of Mary.

Faith, patience, and love before the cross

Have faith, patience, and love for your Cross, as She, the Sorrowful One, believed in, carried, and loved her Cross, which was that of her divine Son. From your Cross too, as from hers, joy and life will spring.

Encouragement to those who suffer

Take courage, brother who weeps, sister who suffers, you do not scatter in vain along the sorrowful road of your life the mysterious seeds of joy, your tears, your sorrows. In your Cross, as in that of Jesus, which is that of Mary sorrowful and weeping, there is fortitude, hope, salvation, victory, peace, freedom, joy, consolation, happiness.

Our Lady of Tears is with you. The days of tears will end, the days of the joy that is to come will have no end.

O Mother of Tears, Queen of heaven,
Beneath your sacred mantle we seek shelter.
In the hours of sorrow, your presence eases
The heavy burden, the friendly heart.

In every drop that falls from your eyes,
We see a sea of love and compassion.
In the trials of life we turn to you, there,
Seeking in your tears consolation.

Mary, fountain of hope and light,
Your sorrow, transformed into intercession,
Leads us to your Son, Jesus,
Eternal fountain of all redemption.

In your tears a river of graces flows,
It purifies us, it makes us born anew.
O Sorrowful Mother, to you we turn,
In your loving gaze we long to lose ourselves.

May each of your tears be a seed
Of faith, hope, and charity in the heart.
May we, under your protection, constantly
Walk toward eternal salvation.

Our Lady of Tears, hear our prayer,
In this valley of tears, be our comfort and guide.
With your motherly hand, warm us,
Lead us to the safe harbor, to joy.
Amen.

Devotion to Mary as consoler in our sufferings is explored in greater depth in the document Marialis Cultus of Paul VI, which holds up Mary as a model of self-giving and of hope.

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