Jerusalem: Via Dolorosa: Mary
Jerusalem. The relief above the doorway at the Fourth Station, outside the Armenian Church of Our Lady of the Spasm, is the work of the artist A. Linghetti. It shows Mary meeting Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. According to tradition the Virgin Mary went back to the places where her son had suffered, been crucified, buried and rose again. The memory of the mother’s suffering and grief over her son is expressed poetically in the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, written by the 13th century Franciscan monk, Jacopone da Todi: “The Mother of Sorrow stood in tears beside the Cross on which her Son was hanging”. The poem has been set to beautiful music by the greatest composers over the centuries, and in the 18th century it was officially adopted into the Christian liturgy.
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