Devotions

The Seven Sorrows Rosary

How to Celebrate Near you

A rosary of seven groups of seven Hail Marys, one group for each of Mary’s seven sorrows, with three more for her tears. It is not prayed on an ordinary five-decade rosary.

How to Celebrate

The Servite friars, the order that runs The Grotto in Portland, have kept this chaplet since the 1200s, which is why it is also called the Servite Rosary. Our Lady of Kibeho, the apparition Bishop Augustin Misago approved in 2001, asked that this rosary be spread.

1. Celebrate Mass on September 15, the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. Find Mass times
2. Get the beads. Seven groups of seven, each opened by a single bead or a small medal of one sorrow, with three more beads and a medal below for Mary’s tears. Traditionally the beads are black.No set? Pray it on your fingers, or on an ordinary rosary counting seven instead of ten. Rugged Rosaries makes one in paracord, an Italian-made one with black crystal beads is sold on Amazon, and The Grotto shop carries the Via Matris booklet.
3. Make the sign of the cross and pray an act of contrition.
4. For each sorrow in turn: name it, sit with it a moment, then pray one Our Father and seven Hail Marys. The seven sorrows
5. Pray three Hail Marys in honor of Mary’s tears.
6. Close with a prayer of your own, or the prayer your parish prints for the feast.

Pray it with others online: Ascension Press has a filmed pray-along, and Our Sunday Visitor has an audio recitation, OSV Prays. Our Lady of Peace Shrine prints a free prayer card (PDF).

The seven sorrows

1. The prophecy of Simeon. Luke 2:34-35, the sword that will pierce her own soul.
2. The flight into Egypt. Matthew 2:13-15.
3. The loss of the child Jesus in the Temple. Luke 2:41-50.
4. Meeting Jesus on the road to Calvary. The Gospels do not name this meeting; it comes down with the Stations of the Cross. The road itself is Luke 23:26-31.
5. The Crucifixion. John 19:25-27, where she is standing.
6. Receiving his body taken down from the cross. John 19:38.
7. The burial. John 19:40-42.

Roundels: Adriaen Isenbrant, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, Church of Our Lady, Bruges. Roundel photographs: Sailko, CC BY 3.0.

“At the cross her station keeping, Stood the mournful Mother weeping, Close to Jesus to the last. Through her heart, his sorrow sharing, All his bitter anguish bearing, Now at length the sword had passed.”

The opening of the Stabat Mater, the Sequence for the September 15 memorial. USCCB readings.

The promises, as reported

What follows is not Church teaching, and we are not presenting it as such. It is what the sources report was said. Marie-Claire Mukangango reported of the 1982 message at Kibeho that, prayed with sincerity, this rosary softens hardened hearts, frees a person from obsession and addiction, and wins true repentance. The Church approved the apparitions, not a schedule of guaranteed results.

Tradition records seven promises Mary made to St. Bridget of Sweden in the fourteenth century, for those who honor her sorrows daily with seven Hail Marys:

1. “I will grant peace to their families.”
2. “They will be enlightened about the divine Mysteries.”
3. “I will console them in their pains and I will accompany them in their work.”
4. “I will give them as much as they ask for as long as it does not oppose the adorable will of my divine Son or the sanctification of their souls.”
5. “I will defend them in their spiritual battles with the infernal enemy and I will protect them at every instant of their lives.”
6. “I will visibly help them at the moment of their death. They will see the face of their mother.”
7. “I have obtained this grace from my divine Son, that those who propagate this devotion to my tears and dolors will be taken directly from this earthly life to eternal happiness, since all their sins will be forgiven and my Son will be their eternal consolation and joy.”

More in the National Catholic Register.

Indulgence

No indulgence is attached to this rosary in the Church’s current list. If your parish church is named for Our Lady of Sorrows, visiting it on its patronal feast and praying the Our Father and the Creed there carries a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions (confession, Communion, a prayer for the pope’s intentions, and being free of attachment to any sin, even venial).

Source: Enchiridion of Indulgences, grant 33.

Learn more

• Readings for the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows USCCB
• The Kibeho declaration, 2001 EWTN