St. Paul composes a mini-creed to remind the people of Corinth that their faith is based on the concrete human experiences of real human beings. The feast of the Sorrows of Mary serve as a reminder that human experiences can be sad and painful. The tradition was that there were “seven dolors” of Mary but, of course, as in every human life there were many more sorrows than the ones listed in the Bible. A mother can have the sorrow of weaning her child, of sending her child off to school for the first time, of having her child leave home on their own. Both the terrible sorrows of suffering and death and the sweet sorrows of life unfolding testify to the presence and action of God in the world.
