I woke up this morning with the word DOLOROSA in my head.
And I remembered that when I was 12 years old and it was time for my Confirmation I wanted to add the name Dolorosa to my names. I was baptized Norma Margaret but at Confirmation you get to add another name to yourself--the only one that you get to choose for yourself. It is your warrior name I guess--the one that you think is the real YOU.
I felt that I was full of sorrows and that name I chose was bitterly denounced and argued against by my mother and my Aunt Anna.
| Stabat Mater Dolorosa is considered one of the seven greatest Latin hymns of all time. It is based upon the prophecy of Simeon that a sword was to pierce the heart of His mother, Mary (Lk 2:35). The hymn originated in the 13th century during the peak of Franciscan devotion to the crucified Jesus and has been attributed to Pope Innocent III (d. 1216), St. Bonaventure, or more commonly, Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306), who is considered by most to be the real author. The hymn is often associated with the Stations of the Cross. In 1727 it was prescribed as a Sequence for the Mass of the Seven Sorrows of Mary (September 15) where it is still used today. In addition to this Mass, the hymn is also used for the Office of the Readings, Lauds, and Vespers for this memorial. |
| STABAT Mater dolorosa iuxta Crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius. My love of Latin started in the 8TH Grade. My teacher was Sister Michaeleen -- at Saint Joseph's School in Pawtucket. She was the best teacher I ever had and now I see that she made me want to teach and showed me how to teach. She was my home room teacher and she was going to Boston College to complete an MA in Latin. Each day if we finished our work, she would reward us by reading from her translation assignment. She was translating Virgil's Aeneid. I will never forget the day she read the passage that describes Aeneas' desertion of the Queen who has been so kind to him and has fallen in love with him. When she realizes that his ship has sailed, Dido asks the help of her sister Ana to make a pyre to burn all that he left behind. Of course, she also means not just his material belongings but she intends to throw herself on the pyre of his discards to burn her self. This is what Sister read this day of the love of the two sisters:
[672] Swooning, her sister heard, and in dismay rushed through the throng, tearing her face with her nails, and beating her breast with her fists, as she called on the dying woman by name. “Was this your purpose, sister? Did you aim your fraud at me?
Was this for me the meaning of your pyre, this the meaning of your altar and fires? Forlorn, what shall
I first lament? Did you scorn in death your sister’s company? You should have summoned me to share
your fate; the same sword stroke, the same moment would have taken us both! Did these hands indeed
build the pyre, and did my voice call on our father’s gods, in order that, when you were lying thus, I,
cruel one, should be far away? You have destroyed yourself and me together, sister, the Sidonian
senate and people, and your city! Bring me water to bathe her wounds and catch with my lips whatever
last breath may linger!” Thus speaking, she had climbed the high steps, and, throwing her arms round
her dying sister, sobbed and clasped her to her bosom, stanching with her dress the dark streams
of blood. She, trying to lift her heavy eyes, swoons again, and the deep-set wound gurgles in her
breast. Thrice rising, she struggles to prop herself on her elbow, thrice the bed rolled back, with
wandering eyes sought high heaven’s light, and when she found it, moaned.
[693] Then almighty Juno, pitying her long agony and painful dying, sent Iris down from heaven to release
her struggling soul from the prison of her flesh. For since she perished neither in the course of fate nor
by a death she had earned, but wretchedly before her day, in the heat of sudden frenzy, not yet had
Propserpine taken from head the golden lock and consigned her to the Stygian underworld. So Iris
on dewy saffron wings flits down through the sky, trailing athwart the sun a thousand shifting tints,
and halted above her head. “This offering, sacred to Dis, I take as bidden, and from your body set
you free”: so she speaks and with her hand severs the lock; and therewith all the warmth
passed away, and the life vanished into the winds.
As Sister Michaeleen read this passage to us she began to weep. And I put my head down on the desk and I wept with her. In that moment, she showed the passion and the vulnerability of a great teacher. THANK YOU, SISTER MICHAELEEN (RIP). You set my life's course and gave it meaning. |
No comments:
Post a Comment