Our Lady of Sorrows, on 15 September, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross, venerates Mary in her suffering, above all at the foot of the cross. The devotion crystallised the medieval reflection on Mary's grief into a set of seven sorrows, from the prophecy of Simeon that a sword would pierce her own soul, through the flight into Egypt and the loss of the child in the Temple, to the crucifixion, the taking-down of the body, and the burial. The image of the Mater Dolorosa, her heart pierced by swords, is its counterpart in art, as is the Pieta.
The feast owes much to the Servite Order, the Servants of Mary, who made the sorrows central to their spirituality and spread a corresponding rosary. The great sequence Stabat Mater, "the sorrowful mother stood", set by many composers, belongs to this devotion. Placed immediately after the feast of the Cross, the day binds Mary's compassion to Christ's passion, presenting her grief as a participation in the suffering by which, in Catholic belief, the world is redeemed, and it became a focus for those bringing their own griefs to a figure understood to have shared them.