Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Perhaps those here listening can relate to the following experience. I don't know if it's ever happened to you that you've suffered and you had a friend with you, a family member, a person you loved, and that person, though he or she could do nothing to relieve your pain, nothing to relieve your suffering, just that person's presence was already a great consolation and a great relief. Having a person present to you in your pain, in your suffering, suffering with you, was already a relief.
I've certainly had such people in my life. Though they could do nothing to relieve my suffering, the fact that they suffered with me, were there for me, was a great consolation. Our Lord had such people in His life. When He was crucified, Our Lady standing at the foot of the cross, though she could do nothing to relieve His suffering, was a great consolation to Him by her mere presence, by the fact that she suffered with Him. Our Lady had such people in her life: Saint John. It might seem a meager consolation, but Our Lady's heart appreciated John's presence there with her, the only Apostle, and that was a great consolation to her.
And John, the beloved disciple, symbolizes all of us because we can be that solace to Our Lady. We can be that solace to Our Lord just by our presence to them, by suffering with them. You know that Pius XI in his teaching on reparation to our Lord and to Our Lady says that Our Lord on the cross, in His passion, foresaw into the future and until the end of time all the fruits of the Redemption. He saw all the fruit of that passion before His eyes, and because Our Lady was suffering with Him, because Our Lady was with Him, the Co-Redemptrix, He gave her also a share in that vision of the fruits of the Redemption until the end of time. All the persons saved and sanctified by that redemption were before their eyes, and therefore we can be a consolation to our Lord and to Our Lady by thinking of their passion, by suffering with them, by having compassion. We can be a great consolation for them.
And this, in short, in summary, is the devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady: thinking of her sorrows, thinking of her pain with her, entering the passion of Our Lord, being there for her, being there for Jesus. It's a powerful devotion, and today we celebrate seven Saints, the Seven Holy Founders who founded a religious order dedicated to the sorrows of Our Lady. They were from Florence in 1233. Each individually had the same vision. Our Blessed Lady appeared to them on the Feast of the Assumption, telling them to leave the world, dedicate themselves to a life of prayer and penance. Seven years later, on Good Friday of 1240, she appeared to them again, showed them the habit they were to wear and told them, "Propagate devotion to my sorrows. If you do so, you will have eternal life."
The whole purpose of this order, again, is to suffer with Our Lady, to have compassion on Our Lady, to be there with her, for her, and through her for Our Lord. It's a beautiful devotion, and there's a promise associated with it: eternal life. Why? Because Our Lady will never be outdone in generosity. If we are there for her, she will always be there for us. In fact, she will be there for us in an incomparable way in each and every one of our sufferings. Even if the suffering doesn't go away - there will be pain in life that doesn't go away, God lets it be there for a greater good, God allows it because it sanctifies us, God allows it because it is His will for us to be conformed to our Lord through it - so even though pain might not go away, Our Lady will be there with us in that pain, making it incomparably more bearable and sweet.
It's the amazing blessing of devotion to Our Lady's sorrows. She will not be outdone in generosity. She will be there with us in our sorrows, and none of those sorrows will be wasted. She'll unite them to the cross of Jesus, make them redemptive, co-redemptive, sanctifying, and all that we suffer in this life, all the pain, all of that will contribute to our reward of eternal life and that glory with Jesus and Mary eternal life one day.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.