Overview:

The Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

A Reflection for the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved
he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

Find today’s readings here.

I’ve been thinking lately about the mother of Maria Goretti. As I’m writing this, it is the day after the canonization of Carlo Acutis, only the second saint in history whose mother has attended his or her canonization. The first was the mother of St. Maria Goretti, in 1950.

Maria’s story—and that of her mother—are stories of tragedy. Their family lived in poverty and shared a house with another family, whose 20 year old son persistently made sexual advances on Maria. When she was eleven, he tried a third time, after two previous attempts, to rape her; when she refused, he stabbed her 14 times, apparently forgiving him on her deathbed at the hospital as doctors tried to treat her wounds.

Her mother, it turns out, enabled the abuse, likely because their housing hung in the balance. One pious biography tells of Maria trying to avoid being in a room alone with her assailant, and her mother telling her she needed to stay. “Very well, Mamma, then I will just stay here alone,” Maria replies. (This information comes from a powerful B.D. McClay essay first published in Commonweal during the “summer of shame” in 2018, which I revisit at least once a year.)

The hagiography says Maria’s mother was haunted by the fact that she’d left her daughter alone with the man for the rest of her life. Still, after her death, and after being unrepentant for three years, the assailant began going to church with Maria’s mother; eventually, he converted to Catholicism. They both attended her canonization.

When I think of Our Lady of Sorrows—this particular depiction of a mother’s pain, of seeing her child (Jesus, in this case) abused and killed—I think of Maria Goretti’s mother. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s just because of the canonizations this weekend; I rarely think of her otherwise because Maria’s story, as McClay points out, is so horrifying and so misunderstood.

And yet, there is this note of resonance: Faced with death, Jesus entrusts his mother to his beloved disciple. In her death, Maria Goretti appears to her assailant in a dream, hands him lilies that burn the moment they touch his hands. And he takes care of her mother, and she of him, despite the immense (I, not a saint, would say “unforgivable”) pain he caused her.

The “beloved disciple,” believed to be John, didn’t kill Jesus. He didn’t abuse him. But he couldn’t stop him from dying. Yet John takes Mary into his home, and Mary is with the disciples at Pentecost.

A Jesuit friend of mine once told me that “Forgiveness is a miracle you can work.” I can’t change water into wine like Jesus, or walk on water like Jesus, but I can forgive. That is just as miraculous.

Correction: An email version of this reflection incorrectly stated that the disciple John was not with Jesus at the time of his crucifixion. This version has been corrected.

Colleen Dulle is the Vatican Correspondent at America and co-hosts the "Inside the Vatican" podcast. She is the author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter (Image, 2025).