Perhaps there are some images too devastating in our past to be afforded the grace of forgetting them.  My years of processing the deaths at the children's hospital at St. Louis where I worked second shift provide more than a few of those.  AIDS-infected and cocaine-addicted babies, physically and sexually abused babies, Leukemia babies, and babies who died from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome were all children whose causes of death were known.  "If the parents were better educated, and if we could have helped them rise above the cycles of violence and poverty," we said, "then maybe the baby would have lived."

Nothing at the hospital could have prepared me for the experience of my brother and sister-in-law at the funeral of their son, my nephew, Christopher, who died from the inexplicable Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.  Christopher's parents were barely holding themselves together.  His mother kept thanking God for Christopher's recent baptism, and his father kept clinging to his Bible.  They were in shock, their eyes were stinging with too much crying and not enough tears, and their arms ached from the emptiness.
The particular image that stands out from those agonizing days of total helplessness is the sight of my two brothers at the cemetery.  While the tiny coffin was readied for burial, another brother and sister-in-law, holding their own healthy infant son, stood close to Christopher's parents.  I saw my brother with the healthy baby put his arms around my brother who was so lost.  If he could have given him his own child in place of Christopher, if that would have helped even a little, he would have done so.  There was simply no humanly possible way to alleviate that kind of suffering.

Today's memorial, Our Lady of Sorrows, provides us with a similar image.  The Mother of Jesus, so filled with zeal for God, so blessed in her being that she opened her womb to the will of God, received the lifeless body of her Son on Good Friday.  There must have been utter agony on Mary's face, a face that was once so full of hope when she visited her cousin Elizabeth.  Her arms that had cradled an infant son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, embraced the body of One brutalized and executed as a common criminal.  She must have felt her life was over.  She must have sobbed.  Her heart must have felt, indeed, like it had been "pierced with a sword."  Even the presence of the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the cross could not alleviate the pain of losing her Son.

The good news today is that "for God, all things are possible."  Only God can bring life from death.  The person who believes this good news and is strengthened to live new life in the community of believers finds hope in the most desperate situation.  Paul was a man who had an indomitable hope in the face of suffering.  He endured many hardships so as to be present to people who were in the midst of suffering, in whatever form that suffering manifested itself.  Particularly in the Christian community at Corinth, where divisions threatened its survival, Paul was steadfast in his commitment.

The Mother of Jesus exemplifies the faithful disciple about whom Paul wrote, the runner who races steadily toward the finish line.  Mary, in absolute trust and fidelity, stood before the cross, waiting on God.  God had not abandoned Mary.  God does not abandon any parent who loses a child in premature death.  When Jesus died on the cross, and when Mary wept, God remembered all our inconsolable sorrows.  The miracle of Easter Sunday is God's response to that scene of devastation.  He is truly the God of the living!
Today, my prayer is in solidarity with all the Marys of our world, standing in the shadow of the cross.  In the hope of having a share in the blessings of the Gospel, "My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God!"  Come to our aid, O Mother of God.  Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.