In the 16th Century, Cornelius a Lapide created a Scripture Commentary so complete and scholarly that it was practically the universal commentary in use by Catholics for hundreds of years. Here is his commentary on verse 35 of the 2nd chapter of the Holy Gospel of St. Luke.
Ver. 35.—Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
“Sword,” in the Arabic version, lance; the Greek ζομφαία means both sword and lance or dart.
What is this sword?
The true interpretation of “sword” here is with reference to the sufferings inflicted on Christ, or rather contradiction spoken of a little before; for the contradiction of the tongue is spoken of in Scripture as a sword, as in Ps. lvii. 4, “The sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword;” and Ps. lxiv. 3, “Who whet their tongues like a sword;” and Ps. cv. 18, “The sword hath passed through His soul” (Vulg.)
The true interpretation of “sword” here is with reference to the sufferings inflicted on Christ, or rather contradiction spoken of a little before; for the contradiction of the tongue is spoken of in Scripture as a sword, as in Ps. lvii. 4, “The sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword;” and Ps. lxiv. 3, “Who whet their tongues like a sword;” and Ps. cv. 18, “The sword hath passed through His soul” (Vulg.)
This sword, then, is twofold. (1.) The sword of the tongue. For the Blessed Virgin, hearing the insults, calumnies, and blasphemies with which Christ was assailed by the people, even when He was crucified, suffered intense tortures, just as though a sword had been struck through her soul. (2.) The sword of iron - the nails and other torments which not only pierced the body and soul of Christ, but also pierced the soul of the Virgin. Just as when a man stabs with a sword at two persons who are next each other so as to kill the one and pierce and wound the other. Such is the interpretation of S. Augustine (Ep. 59, ad Paulinum), Sophronius (Hom. de Assumptione), Francis Lucas, Jansenius, Toletus, Barradius, and others.
How great was the torture inflicted by this sword we may gather, with Toletus, from the fact that it was her Son Who suffered, whom the Mother of God loved more than herself, so that she would far rather have suffered and been crucified herself. Love is the measure of sorrow.
Secondly, from the severity of Christ’s torments and the wideness of their extent; for He suffered the most fearful agonies in all His senses and all His members, and all this the Blessed Virgin endured also by her sympathy with Him.
Thirdly, the dignity of the Personage who suffered; for the Blessed Virgin pondered deeply the fact that this was the True God, the Messiah, and Saviour of the World.
Fourthly, the long duration of His sufferings; for Christ suffered all His life long, until He breathed forth His Soul on the Cross.
Fifthly, His loneliness; for He suffered alone, deserted by His Apostles and all His friends, by the angels, and by God Himself, so that He cried aloud, “My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” For, though the Blessed Virgin stood by Him and suffered with Him, yet did the Mother’s anguish but add a new pang to the Son’s torments, and this grief again had its echo in the Mother’s soul.
So it is that S. John of Damascus (de Fide, lib. iv. cap. xv.) remarks, “The pains she had escaped in childbirth she bore at the time of His Passion, so that she felt her bosom torn asunder by reason of the depth of her maternal love.” It is for this reason that the doctors teach that the Blessed Virgin was a martyr, and more than a martyr. As Christ, in His Passion, was tormented more than all the martyrs, so too was the Blessed Virgin by her sympathy with Him; and by this torment she would have been overcome and would have died had not God preserved her life by His special support. As, therefore, S. John the evangelist, who was put into the vessel of boiling oil, is a martyr, because this suffering would, in the natural course, have resulted in his death, if God had not preserved his life by a miracle, so also is the Blessed Virgin.
It may be objected to this that the Jews did not wish to torture or kill the Blessed Virgin, but only Christ. But, in torturing Christ, they tortured His Virgin Mother, just as he who tortures the body tortures, the soul, for she was more closely joined to Christ in feeling than the body to the soul. Besides, the Jews persecuted all the relatives of Christ, as they did His apostles and disciples, out of hatred of Him. S. Bridget (Serm. Angelic. cc. xvii., xviii.) gives a pathetic account of the strength of this sword of the Virgin’s sorrow.
Symbolically, S. Bernard (Serm. xxix.) interprets this sword or dart as love: for where there is sorrow there too is love; in love there is no living without sorrow, nor in sorrow without love. “The chosen arrow,” he says, “is the love of Christ, which not only pierced, but pierced through and through, the soul of Mary, so that it left in her virginal breast not the smallest part void of love, but with all her heart, and all her soul, and all her strength, she loved. And truly, again, it penetrated through her to come to us, that of that fulness we might all receive, and she might be the Mother of that love whose father is the love of God. . . . And in her whole self did she receive the vast sweet wound of love. Happy shall I think myself if sometimes I may feel pricked with but the very tip of that sword’s point, that my soul too may say, I am wounded with love.”
