Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.   
Yesterday, we spoke of how the cross of Christ is the greatest enigma or greatest paradox of our faith and how we need to embrace the crosses that our Lord sends us so that we can better understand God's ways and more fully enter into the life and the joy of Christ. So today, we celebrate the one who stood by the cross of our Lord and who, under the cross, became our spiritual mother, as we heard in the gospel. God had told the woman in Genesis 3:16, "In pain you shall bring forth children." That painful, child-bearing experience of Mary is what we celebrate in today's feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
Our spiritual birth caused her tremendous joy and suffering, just like being the mother of God was also a source of tremendous joy and tremendous suffering for Our Lady. Our Lady is truly a model for us of every virtue, but she's especially a model for us of perfect cooperation with God and suffering willed out of love. Because she was full of grace and constantly led by the Holy Spirit during her life, every thought, word, and action of Mary was sanctifying, sanctifying for herself, because she too grew in sanctity, her fullness of grace kept expanding during her earthly life, and her thoughts and words and actions were sanctifying for others too.
And the greatest demonstration of her sanctity was her suffering alongside her Son on Calvary, a suffering not simply accepted with a passive resignation, but as we said, a suffering willed out of love, love for Jesus, love for God the Father, love for the Holy Spirit, and love for us. God the Father willed the death of His Son as atonement for our sins. Christ fully united His will to the will of the Father, and Mary, knowing that was God's plan, also willed the death of her firstborn Son, knowing that at the same time it would cause her unspeakable pain and sorrow. That's why many saints have called Our Lady the co-redemptrix, because through the sufferings and prayers of her pure heart, Jesus shared the work of His redemption with her in a special way, so special that, like we heard in the gospel, we can now call her mother, our mother, not just the mother of Jesus.
It is possible to experience joy in the midst of suffering. I can experience joy in the higher faculties of my soul, so in my intellect and my will, even if at the same time I'm experiencing physical or spiritual suffering. If what I'm doing is right, if it's in accord with God's will and His commandments, then even the worst type of suffering, even in that I can have the peace of God and the consolation of God. In His higher faculties, so in His intellect and His will, Christ on the cross was experiencing great joy, because He was perfectly, fully fulfilling the will of His heavenly Father, but in His lower faculties, in His body, in His sentiments, He was in torment and agony.
The experience of Our Lady under the cross was, I believe, quite similar, even though unlike Jesus, she's not God. In her higher faculties, she was full of joy, because the moment of redemption was at hand. In her lower faculties, her sentiments, even in her physical body, she was experiencing the pain of that sword of sorrow, which, in a certain sense, she carried with her all her life, not only storing up in her heart all the painful events concerning her Son, but also witnessing and experiencing the death of the apostles and the first martyrs of the Church, and being their spiritual mother, the pain was all the greater. As we said yesterday, the greater the love, the greater the suffering.
Something which can be very helpful and beneficial spiritually is this. When we are suffering, especially when we're suffering because of the wrongs or evils that other people have done to us or are doing to us, let's learn to call to mind the sufferings and the pains of Our Lord and Our Lady, everything that they had to endure during the different phases of their life.  If we feel unwelcomed in certain circumstances, let's think of how unwelcomed Jesus and Mary felt at times during their earthly life, and how unwelcomed they still feel today. They still are today, essentially. Think of how at Bethlehem, they wouldn't even make a room in the inn for the pregnant mother of God, and how Jesus, the king of the world, was born in a miserable stable. That's the welcome He received when He came to this earth.
Or worst yet, think of the welcome that Herod and his men tried to give Jesus, seeking to kill Him in His infancy. It was so bad that the holy family had to leave the country because there was so much hostility towards them. And then Herod killed a number of little children in Bethlehem, hoping to kill Our Lord. Think of how much suffering that must have cost Our Lady to hear of that news. Her and her Son were truly made to feel unwelcomed by the people that should have welcomed them the most.
Or if we feel unappreciated, think of how unappreciated Jesus and Mary were during their life, and still are to this day. Everything that they did during their lives, from sunrise to sunset, it was all done for the glory of God and for love of others, every action. How unappreciated were they during their earthly life. All that Jesus did during His earthly ministry was preach the good news, heal the sick, cure the blind, comfort the afflicted, and in return for all of His goodness and generosity, He was, as Isaiah prophesied, despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, Isaiah 53:3.
When Jesus performed miracles, the religious leaders went out and plotted about how to kill Him, even though they just witnessed the miracle right in front of them. Talk about being unappreciated. Or if we feel misunderstood, think of how misunderstood Our Lord and Our Lady were during their lifetime and are still misunderstood today. When He was growing up, no one except for His parents understood who Jesus was. Mary was presumed to have been unfaithful to St. Joseph because she was found with child before they lived together. St. Joseph, through a dream, later understood that that wasn't the case, but did he or Our Lady communicate to everyone else what really happened? No. And so the rumors continued about her infidelity.
Or regarding Jesus, how He was presumed to be ignorant because He was a carpenter's Son and didn't study. "How did this man get all this learning without being taught," they said of Him in John 7:15. Or think of how the Israelites looked on Jesus and Mary as just a simple, pious mother and child from a backward little town, little Nazareth, backwards Nazareth. Remember Nathaniel's comment to Philip when Philip wanted to introduce him to Jesus, Philip told him that He was from Nazareth. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Nathaniel said, John 1:46. Jesus and Mary were what some people would call deplorables, insignificant nobodies in people's eyes. So if you're feeling misunderstood and not appreciated, think of how misunderstood and unappreciated they were.
Or if we feel unloved, think of how unloved Jesus and Mary were by God's chosen people, by those who should have loved them the most. Think of how unloved they still are, even to this day, by so many people. Or if we think that no one understands our pain and our suffering, can anyone understand the pain that Our Lady experienced in this lifetime? Think about Our Lord and Our Lady's sorrows when we are suffering. When we do that, it can actually be something which really brings us a lot closer to them.
And another thing we want to keep in mind is this, which we always say, our sorrows are also Our Lady and Our Lord's sorrows as well. Because what causes us pain and grief and frustration is important to them. If a good mother sees her child suffering, doesn't her heart go out to her child? Doesn't she, in a certain sense, feel the pain of her child as well? It's no different with Our Lady. Her heart goes out to us in our suffering. And that sword that passed through her heart had to do not only with the painful events of Our Lord's life, but also it had to do with all the painful events that we experience in life, too. Because we, too, are her children.
The sorrows of Our Lady can teach us so, so much about everything about life, about God, about the love of Her and the love of Her for Her Son, the love of Her for us, the love of Jesus for us as well, too. On this Feast of the Sorrowful Mother, I urge you to not put away any of those sufferings. Don't put them to waste in the sense that share them with Our Lady. Use them to draw you closer to Her and to Our Lord, too. Use them to reflect more also on what they suffered during their life. Use your sufferings even to have a heart of compassion towards Jesus and Mary. How much compassion did they receive during their life?
Psalm 69:21, speaking of Our Lord, says, "Insult has broken my heart, and I despair. I looked for compassion, but there was none. For comforters, but found none." So let's be the ones to have compassion for Jesus and Mary and their sufferings and let our compassion extend to others as well. Because remember what Our Lord says. He says, "Whatever you do to the least of My people, you do it to Me, too," Matthew 25:40. If we want to pay Jesus and Mary back for all that they suffered for us, we pay them back to the extent that we show love and mercy towards our neighbors. Let's ask Our Lady for the grace to do that on this special feast of her sorrows.   
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.