Mary was the first person to join her sufferings to that of Christ, the crucified One, the Victim whose blood saves us. When we follow her lead, our meager offerings of suffering somehow become redemptive; they have the power to help someone else in need, thereby allowing good to come of our pain.
Vatican II taught: "Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow grow meaningful."
The way of suffering truly is the way of saints-in-the-making, be they victims, survivors, or onlookers. It is the way we work, pray, and live through the worries and anxieties and difficulties of a post-9/11 world.
This day, and every day, may we join our sufferings to Jesus, like Mary did.
Let there also gather beneath the Cross all people of good will, for on this Cross is the "Redeemer of man", the Man of Sorrows, who has taken upon himself the physical and moral sufferings of the people of all times, so that in love they may find the salvific meaning of their sorrow and valid answers to all of their questions.
Together with Mary, Mother of Christ, who stood beneath the Cross, we pause beside all the crosses of contemporary man.
We invoke all the Saints, who down the centuries in a special way shared in the suffering of Christ. We ask them to support us.
And we ask all you who suffer to support us. We ask precisely you who are weak to become a source of strength for the Church and humanity. In the terrible battle between the forces of good and evil, revealed to our eyes by our modern world, may your suffering in union with the Cross of Christ be victorious! (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, 1984, par. 31)
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