The Sorrows and Joys of Mary

By Mary Pezzulo

The Seven Sorrows of Mary. The Seven Joys of the Franciscan Crown. Why not pray both at once?

This is a collection of fourteen lively meditations on the sorrows and joys of Mary, told in the order they happened in the life of Mary: joys, then sorrows, then joy, then the most terrible sorrows on the Via Dolorosa, and finally the perfect joy of the Resurrection and Mary's assumption and crowning in Heaven.

May these meditations on the sorrows and joys of Mary remind you of how Mary suffers and rejoices with you in your own life.

Mary Pezzulo received her BA in English from Otterbein University. She blogs about art, religion, politics and her life in Northern Appalachia at the Steel Magnificat blog on the Patheos Catholic channel. She is the author of Stumbling Into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy from Ave Maria Press and Meditations on the Way of the Cross from Apocryphile Press.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John R. Mabry
• Release date: Mar 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781955821834

Mary Pezzulo

Mary E. Pezzulo is the creator of the Steel Magnificat blog on the Patheos Catholic channel, where she writes about everything from current events to movies to poverty in the Ohio Valley to the kindness of strangers. Pezzulo earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Otterbein University and studied philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. She is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross. She and her husband, Michael, live in Steubenville, Ohio, with their daughter.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Her name was Sister Mary Thomasina.

Sister Mary Thomasina was my Kindergarten teacher. She was one of those ancient nuns who is about four feet tall and perpetually seventy-five. She taught me, and then my siblings, and she kept on teaching until we were grown-up. When I was in college I found she'd retired, but they carted her out of the home for retired sisters once a week to teach Catechism lessons at that same Kindergarten until she died.

Sister Mary Thomasina was an expert in teaching Catechism. Her favorite trick was to teach Catechism on the side, while also teaching something else. Once she was teaching us to write and identify the letter L, and she started naming all the things she could think of that began with L. Left. Lizard. Lion. Lung. Leopard. Leprosy. Do you know what leprosy is? It's a disease that makes your skin fall off. Once, when Jesus was preaching, he saw ten men who had leprosy... And we got her lively, animated, improvised version of the Bible story.

She also told Bible stories when we prayed. We prayed at least a decade of the Rosary per day, with Sister Mary Thomasina introducing each mystery and a child volunteer leading the Hail Marys on a great big knotted cord. Sister Mary Thomasina wouldn't just say the name of the mystery. She would take several minutes to tell a lively, animated, improvised version of each Mystery for us to think about while we prayed our ten Hail Marys.

And that is still the way that I pray. Every time I say a prayer which involves meditation, I first call to mind the Gospel story I'm meditating on, and then I tell myself a lively version of it in my mind. I fill in the places that the Gospel doesn't tell us. I think about what Christ and the saints must have been thinking at the time. I think of how it fits in to the whole story of our salvation. Sometimes I meditate for so long, I forget to pray the prayers that are supposed to go with it.

One year, during Advent, I started to write these lively Gospel meditations down. I meditated on the mysteries of the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows and on the particular set of Seven Joys that is known as the Franciscan Crown. That left me with fourteen meditations on the life of the Virgin Mary, seven of them sad and seven of them happy. I posted them to my blog during the four weeks of Lent, and they were popular.

I decided to put them down in a book, in case anybody else wanted to meditate on the Seven Sorrows and the Seven Joys. But it looked so strange to just write seven sad meditations, then go back to the beginning and write seven happy ones. So I decided to meditate on the Sorrows and Joys in chronological order in the life of the Mother of God: three joys, then some sorrows, then back to joy, then a whole string of the most terrible sorrows on the Via Dolorosa, and then the purest joy.

Anyone wanting to recite the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows or the Franciscan Crown can still use these meditations, just skipping the chapters that don't fit. Or, you can do what Sister