Lectio Divina — Day 15 of the Season of Creation
Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows
Theme: “near”
Lectio — What does the Word say?
> “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and…”
— John 19:25
There is extraordinary power in that little word: near.
John does not tell me that Mary could stop the Crucifixion. She could not remove the nails, silence the mockery, heal the wounds or prevent her Son’s death.
She could do something both smaller and greater.
She could remain near.
On this Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, I contemplate Mary beneath the Cross. She teaches me that love is not always the power to change what is happening. Sometimes love is simply refusing to leave.
And perhaps this is also a lesson for this Season of Creation. I cannot personally repair every wound inflicted upon our common home. I cannot replenish an aquifer, reverse a drought or solve climate change by myself. Yet I can refuse to become distant from creation’s suffering.
I can remain near.
—
Meditatio — What does the Word say to me?
Our Lady of Sorrows became near and dear to me when a good friend introduced me to this devotion after our son Daniel was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer.
Since then, Mary’s Seven Sorrows have ceased to be seven distant episodes from Scripture. They have become landmarks along a road my family actually traveled.
The First Sorrow: The Prophecy of Simeon.
A sword will pierce Mary’s soul. I hear that prophecy in the telephone call when Kim and I learned that Daniel had stage-four pancreatic cancer. There are telephone calls after which the world is never quite the same.
The Second Sorrow: The Flight into Egypt.
Mary and Joseph suddenly leave home because someone they love is threatened. I remember our rushing from The Glenn to Fort Worth because we needed to be near Daniel in the hospital.
The Third Sorrow: The Loss of Jesus in the Temple.
Mary searches anxiously for her Son. We arrived at that enormous hospital and became lost ourselves, searching the corridors for Daniel’s room. It is a small detail compared with cancer, yet grief often lodges precisely in such details.
The Fourth Sorrow: Mary Meets Jesus Carrying the Cross.
I remember Kim and me embracing in Daniel’s hospital room and looking through the window at a beautiful sunset while he underwent exploratory surgery. Creation was astonishingly beautiful while our world seemed to be breaking apart. We knew a road lay ahead that none of us wanted to travel.
The Fifth Sorrow: The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus.
Mary remains near the Cross. I remember being near Daniel’s bedside after he entered home hospice, watching him watch his daughter perform in her school talent show. Even as death drew nearer, life continued. A father was still a father. A daughter was still a daughter. Love remained.
The Sixth Sorrow: Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross.
I remember arriving at Daniel’s house that Sunday morning shortly after he had died. I kissed his cold forehead. Then I watched his body taken from his bed and placed in the hearse.
There are moments for which words are too small.
Mary simply remained near.
The Seventh Sorrow: Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb.
I remember Daniel’s funeral. Like Mary, there came a moment when we had done everything that could be done, said everything we could manage to say, and finally had to surrender someone we loved into hands other than our own.
And now I understand something about this devotion that perhaps I could never have learned merely by reading about it.
Mary does not teach me how to avoid sorrow.
She teaches me how to remain near love when love becomes sorrowful.
That speaks unexpectedly to this Season of Creation and its image of Living Water.
Tears are water too.
The tears of Mary beneath the Cross, the tears shed beside hospital beds, the tears of parents burying children, and even creation’s groaning belong within the same mystery of a world thirsting for redemption.
I do not worship a God who observes suffering from a safe distance. In Jesus Christ, God comes near. And beside Christ stands Mary, showing me what discipleship looks like when there is nothing left to fix.
Perhaps the question today is therefore not, Can I eliminate suffering?
It is:
To whom—or to what wounded part of creation—is Christ asking me simply to draw near?
—
Oratio — What do I say to God?
Our Lady of Sorrows,
you stood near the Cross
when there was nothing you could do
except love your Son and remain.
You know the sword that enters the heart of a parent.
Be near Kim and me as the Seven Sorrows continue to carry memories of Daniel into our prayer. When those memories hurt, do not let me run from them. Help me discover within them not only what was lost, but the love that made losing him hurt so deeply.
Lord Jesus,
you were near Daniel in his suffering when I could not heal him.
You were near him when we rushed to the hospital.
You were near him during surgery.
You were near his hospice bed.
You were near him when he died.
And you are nearer to him now than I can comprehend.
During this Season of Creation, make me equally attentive to the sorrows of our common home. May Living Water remind me of Baptism, of tears, of thirst, of mercy and of the river of life flowing from you.
When I cannot repair everything, teach me not to turn away.
Teach me Mary’s vocation:
to remain near.
Amen.
—
Contemplatio — Who gets to remain near?
My experience with Daniel helps me hear the warning of Magnifica humanitas differently.
When someone I love is suffering, I do not primarily need an efficient system. I need people who will come near.
A machine might organize Daniel’s medical information. An algorithm might calculate probabilities. Artificial intelligence might someday identify patterns that improve diagnosis and treatment. These can be genuine goods, and I can thank God for human ingenuity.
But no machine can stand where Mary stood.
No algorithm grieves a son. No language model feels the sword piercing a mother’s heart. No simulation of empathy can replace the hand of another human being held beside a hospital bed.
And therefore the question of AI “alignment” cannot simply be whether machines conform to something vaguely called human values. Whose values? Who chooses them? Who gets heard? Who gets left outside the room?
My experience in Daniel’s hospital room teaches me why that matters.
When suffering becomes merely data, the person suffering can disappear behind the data.
Mary refuses that abstraction.
She does not stand near a diagnosis called “crucifixion.” She stands near Jesus.
Likewise, social justice requires communities themselves to remain near the decisions that affect them. If a few powerful institutions determine the moral assumptions embedded within technological systems, then the rest of humanity may find itself living inside somebody else’s invisible ethical framework.
The answer is not simply a “more moral” machine.
It is a more human society—one in which people can still question, deliberate, disagree, forgive, mourn, love and remain near one another.
That is why slowing down can sometimes be an act of love.
Mary does not hurry through Calvary.
She stays.
And during this Season of Creation, perhaps I must practice the same kind of nearness toward the earth. The water beneath The Glenn must not become merely a number on an aquifer chart. The sheep cannot become merely production units. The dogs cannot become merely predator-control technology. The land cannot become merely property.
I must remain near enough to love them as creation.
Living Water itself invites such nearness. I cannot care deeply about water merely as an abstraction. I must notice the water I drink, the water the sheep drink, the water wildlife seeks, the water that falls—or does not fall—upon the soil beneath my feet.
The Cross teaches me that Christianity does not save the world from a distance.
God comes near.
Mary remains near.
And if I would call myself their disciple, perhaps I must do the same.
—
Actio — Practicing “near”
Today I will pray the Seven Sorrows of Mary slowly, allowing each sorrow to remain connected with Daniel—not to keep myself trapped in the past, but to recognize that love makes the dead near without pretending that death did not happen.
Then I will go outside at The Glenn and stand near a source of water: a trough, faucet, hose or well. I will resist treating it merely as infrastructure and instead contemplate it as Living Water, a creature and gift upon which countless other lives depend.
I will pray:
> Mary, stay near me in sorrow.
Jesus, keep me near your Cross.
Spirit of God, make me near to those who suffer.
And through this Season of Creation,
teach me to remain near enough to creation
that I can hear both its song and its cry.
For perhaps this is one of the deepest lessons Our Lady of Sorrows has taught me through Daniel:
I do not always have to know what to say.
I do not always have to know what to do.
But love asks me not to walk away.
Sometimes holiness begins simply by staying near.
Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows on Day 15 of the Season of Creation
