Virgin Mary, and its celebration was fixed for the Friday of Passion Week. This feast, substituted for that of the Spasm, or rather blended with it, and was eagerly accepted by the faithful.
To represent the anguish of Mary, painters have shown her with her heart pierced with seven swords. According to Benedict XIV, this was the origin of the custom: Seven merchants of Florence withdrew to a mountain near that city, and there laid the foundation of the Order of Services, or Servants of the Blessed Virgin. These pious founders, in meditating on the sorrows of their august patron, discovered seven, of which some are found in the Gospel, and others are based on other pious reasons.
These sorrows are:
1st, the prophecy made in the temple by the holy old man Simeon;
2nd, the flight into Egypt;
3rd, the loss of Jesus in Jerusalem;
4th, the meeting of Jesus and Mary on the way to Calvary;
5th, the crucifixion;
6th, the descent from the cross;
7th, the burial.
In these seven swords we may believe that Christian art has wished to represent the abyss of sorrow into which the soul of Mary was plunged; the number seven being taken for universality. This is the translation of the words of Holy Scripture applied to Mary: "Thy sorrow is great as the sea" (Lament, ii. 13).
- Catholic Ceremonies, Imprimatur 1896 -