Our Lady of Sorrows, Luke 2:35 Wall Art

Mary among the flowers

The Virgin is seated on a gray rock, turned slightly to one side, her eyes closed and her head inclined. A deep blue mantle covers her head and falls around her like a shelter, over a white veil, a rust-red gown and a pale cream skirt. Her hands rest folded in her lap. Unlike many traditional images of Our Lady of Sorrows, there are no swords and no pierced heart here: the grief is carried entirely in her posture.

A small bed of flowers grows at her feet: white lilies, a cream rose and a red one, a blue iris, sprays of lily of the valley, small white blossoms and a daisy. The verse is lettered in two lines above her veil: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,” then Luke 2:35.

Simeon's prophecy in Luke 2:35

Forty days after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph brought him to the temple in Jerusalem, as the law of Moses prescribed. There an old man named Simeon, who had been promised he would not die before seeing the Messiah, took the child in his arms and blessed God. Then he turned to Mary with a darker word: the child would be a sign spoken against, and her own soul would be pierced. The full verse, set in parentheses in the King James Bible, reads: “(Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Christians have read that sword as the pain Mary would carry through her son's life, above all at the foot of the cross. Catholic devotion counts seven sorrows, starting with this prophecy and continuing through the flight into Egypt, the three days searching for the boy Jesus, the road to Calvary, the crucifixion, the taking down from the cross and the burial. The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows falls on September 15, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross, and the medieval hymn Stabat Mater describes her standing beside it.

The iris in the painting is a quiet reference: with its blade-shaped leaves, it has long been associated in Christian art with Mary's sorrows.

Sympathy and remembrance

For someone who has lost a child, a spouse or a parent, this image says that sorrow is not a failure of faith. Catholic families give it as a sympathy gift or hang it near a photograph in memory of a loved one. It also belongs in a prayer corner or beside a home altar.