by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Many things in the Church are left unsaid, but should not be. Most of them which come to mind are evil things, horrendous sacrileges and scandals.

But there are many things which are left unsaid, out of neglect, or a lack of appreciation. And most of these are good things, wonderful things, treasures coming down from Heaven.

In this post, I want to talk about the most precious of these gifts: the tears of Our Lady. I speak here of the gifts with a little, “g”, not of the “Gifts” with the capital, which refer to the Eucharistic or Divine Miracles.

If you have not noticed, Our Lady has been crying a lot lately.

First of all, this is Scriptural: that Our Lady endured the most intense sorrow at seeing Her Son rejected by the High Priests and condemned to death by the Roman Authority and rejected by most of Her own people, crucified and executed as vile criminal. This is a matter of faith, “A sword of sorrow shall pierce your own soul” (Luke 2:35), as was prophesied to her by St. Simeon, the day Our Lord was presented in the Temple as a babe.

But whether Our Lady cried at Calvary, is debated among the saints, with some saying She did, others saying She did not, because of the immaculate perfection of Her humanity allowed her to hide her suffering out of humility. The Holy See weighed into this controversy around the time of the Council of Trent, I think, and outlawed images of Our Lady which showed Her overcome by sorrow, collapsing at the foot of the Cross or fainting away, as contrary to Scripture, which says clearly, “Standing at the foot of the Cross was Mary the Mother of Jesus….” (John 19:25-27)

But in the ages after Pentecost many an image of Our Lady has wept: tears of water or human tears, tears of oil of crisim and even of human blood.  During the Reformation a sold white marble Statue of Our Lady wept tears of blood or water 5 times at Ficarra in Sicily. It is thought Our Lady worked this miracle to show Her profound sorrow at the loss of so many of Her children to the evil lies of the Reformers. I had the great honor to walk in the procession of Our Lady, at Ficarra, in 2011. The devout do it with bear feet on the hot pavements of August.

In 1846 on Sept 19, Our Lady cried at La Salette, France, in the French Alps, saying the sins of mankind were now so heavy She could not avert the wrath of God. This was the first of Her great modern Apparitions. It says a lot, that in the first one She show us Her tears. At La Salette She revealed the corruption of the clergy and the downfall of Rome and the rise of the Antichrist. La Salette is the most beautiful setting Our Lady has ever chosen. I can still vividly remember my visit there in 2004. Make sure to get some of the waters from the spring, which confer the grace on many a soul to repent of their worst sins.

Then, in 1953, from August 29 to September 1, there was the extraordinary weeping of a tiny image of the Immaculate Heart at Syracuse, Italy. A shrine stands there to commemorate the miracle.

I have visited this shrine several times in 2010 and 2011, and can assured you, though the Church is horribly ugly, that Our Lady grants tremendous graces of penitence in this Church and other special graces to guide one in the fidelity to their daily duties and vocation. — It is generally thought in Italy that this prodigy was a warning of the tremendous disaster which would occur at Vatican II. Indeed, in 1953 the Freemasons in the Church began their plan to overthrow the Church from within, because they could not endure the Dogmatic definition of the Assumption of Our Lady body and soul into Heaven, to take the seat of their lord, the cast-down Lucifer.

There have been many other occasions of such prodigies: Statues of Our Lady of Fatima, of the Mystical Rose, even of Our Lady of Guadalupe. One image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in New Mexico, USA, which began to weep tears of Chrism on the Solemnity of Pentecost in 2018: a sign I believe refers to Her sorrow that so many unworthy men are being ordained priests and consecrated Bishops.

Another image of Our Lady wept human tears for several years at Fresno, California, beginning about the time of the first Synod on the Family: I sign I think refers to Her tremendous sorrow at the bishops allowing divorce and giving the Most Blessed Sacrament of Her Son to public adulterers.

IF YOU KNOW OF OTHER WEEPINGS, please include a link to information about them in the comments below, so this post can become a treasury of such for Her children who love Her the most.

Why does Our Lady show us Her tears?

The reasons are many. First of all, there is nothing more evocative to a human being than to see their Mother cry. All faithful children want to do whatever they can to assuage the sorrow of their mother.

So we can be sure, since Our Lady is body and soul in Heaven, that She works these prodigies by the grace of God to send us the strongest message possible: that She is horrendously saddened by sin.

Sorrow for sin is not necessarily salvific. It can be if it leads to repentance. If it is just moved by remorse at suffering on account of our sins or not achieving the crimes we wanted to achieve, it is actually worthy of damnation.

But Our Lady’s Sorrow for sin is co-redemptive, because by it She united Herself perfectly to Jesus on the Cross and contributed Her sorrow and Her offering to that Salvific Sacrifice. This is why the Popes call Her, “Corredemptrix”, because by it all that Jesus Merited for us, She also merited for us. Christ merited much more, and in not all of that did She merit, but as far as we are concerned She is most worthy of the title of collaborater in the work of the Redeemer, which in Latin is, Corredemptrix.

By these tears, however, Our Lady’s purpose is to encourage us, too, to weep for sins.

First for our own sins. And with tears of penitence. With a deep and fiery sort of sorrow which plunges our thoughts to how we merited the horrendous eternal punishments of hell, and how we sinned with such disregard for God’s goodness, for the gratitude we own our Creator, Savior and Redeemer, and in utter disregard for all the good things God and the Saints have done us in our lives.

This kind of burning sorrow washes away the punishment of sins (if we are in the state of grace) and disposes us to make a good Sacramental Confession (whether we are in the state of grace or not). It is the kind of sorrow which makes Confession effective. Without this sorrow, our Confessions rarely are, though many presume they are. That is why so many keep confessing the same sins. They confess without the sorrow which goes down into the soul.

In Her tears the Church Herself can find Salvation from the present Apostasy

Everyone is wondering why no one is doing anything about the horrific pontificate of Bergoglio other than saying that we should shut up and endure it.

This is because so many souls have shut the doors of their hearts to sorrow for sin!

Making reparation for sins is good. But you should start with your own sins, and if you were sincere you would have little time left for others’ sins.

The perfection of sorrow of sins is the source of new life in the Church: it drives souls into religious life to do penance. It makes men realize how important it is that they become priests to save souls. It repairs broken marriages, broken vows, broken friendships. It makes reparation for all kinds of sins.

We need to cry at the horror of our own sins. We need to ask for this grace of tears. The great Saints had it. And if we pray to Our Lady to experience this sorrow, whether we cry tears or not, we are doing a good work, because we all could use a lot more sorrow for sin in the Church.

We need to pray in addition that this grace comes upon the Clergy, from Pope Benedict down to the last seminarian in the Church. The clergy have been pretty much doing their own will for 60 years and they have ruined the Church by it. Only if they begin to weep, will they find the way back to God.

For having tasted true sorrow for sin, the soul is made a warrior against sin. And only with such a rebaptism can we fight the Apostasy and the Apostles of Sin.

These tears are most powerful. For they are in a way a sharing in the tears of the Co-redemptrix, as powerful as the Blood of Christ for us, according to the efficacy of their power to bring us back to God when we have spurned the Blood of Christ. — That is why the Agents of Apostasy hate Her under this title, Corredemptrix, and fear Her tears so much. That is also why they so often deny that it is She who is crying.

O My God,
I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,
and I DETEST my sins
not only because by them I have merited Thy just punishment in Hell,
but most of all because by them I have offended Thee,
Who art the infinite Good and worthy of all my love.

Therefore, trusting in the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
I firmly resolve to sin no more,
to avoid the near occasions of my sins,
and to do penance for them. Amen.

CREDITS: Images of Our Lady are, in order of their appearance: Our Lady of La Salette, Our Lady of Syracuse, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Hobbs, NM, USA.