OLHCA School Sung Mass - Feast of Our Lady of Compassion
Michelangelo's "Pieta," St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
The Virgin Mary, Without Dying, Earned the Palm of Martyrdom Beneath the Cross of Our Lord.
The Academy students attended the 8:00 a.m. sung Mass for this Feast of Our Lady, which primarily commemorates the Compassion of Mary, and then also her Seven Sorrows.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre chose Our Lady of Compassion as the special Patroness of the Sisters and Oblates of the Society of St. Pius X. He designed the veil of the Sisters' habits after the sculpture of Our Lady in Michelangelo's "Pieta," a depiction of the Sorrowful Mother which he particularly loved. It is for this reason that the Sisters iron their veils into a point.
OLHCA graduate Julianne O'Neill is currently a postulant with the SSPX Sisters; and a graduate from last year's class, Audrey Bushnell, is preparing to enter as well.
The high-school boys' Schola chanted the Propers for the sung Mass, and sang a beautifully mournful "Parce Domine" for the Offertory hymn. "Spare, O Lord, spare thy people: let not thy wrath be kindled against us forever."
The Angelus Press comments on the Mass for this day:
The Church commemorates by two feasts the martyrdom suffered by our Lady in union with the Passion of Her Son. The first feast especially commemorates the Compassion of Mary; the second, kept on September 15, the devotion to the Seven Sorrows.
Holy Church willed to consecrate already a special day for honoring the sorrows of Jesus' holy Mother. The sufferings of the Blessed Virgin begin when the old man Simeon predicts that a sword of sorrow will pierce through her soul (Lk. 2:35), but they reach their paroxysm at the foot of the Cross. On that day, not only does she accept the martyrdom of her Son, but she offers Him to the heavenly Father. Our Lord goes spontaneously toward His Passion and Mary offers willingly her beloved Son for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity and for the salvation of mankind. Mary mixes her tears as a mother, the most holy and the most loving of mothers, with the divine blood of her Son for the redemption of the men of all time. God, who had given her this divine Son, asks her for Him back on Calvary, and Mary offers Him with all the love of her heart, in the greatest adhesion to the divine will.
O Mary, O Mother most loving, it is your heart also which is pierced, mystically, by the iron point of the spear! It opens for me an entry into your sorrowful and immaculate heart, and I wish today to meditate on your sufferings.
