Stabat mater dolorosa: Marian Mourning as Peace-Oriented Response to the Sorrows of Our World

Confronted with the horror of Mariupol (‘city of Mary’), we feel devastated. We call for justice and protection, but we also wrestle with paralyzing grief and despair. How to relate to the unbearable loss and suffering? Our contribution will take as its source of inspiration the figure of Our Lady of Sorrows. “Sorrowful, weeping stood the Mother by the cross on which hung her Son. Whose soul, mournful, sad, lamenting, was pierced by a sword.” (Stabat mater, 13th century hymn.) This traditional imagination will be retrieved in dialogue with contemporary political philosophers like Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, who wrote on the ‘work of mourning’ as our ethical responsibility in a world torn by war and violence. Mourning is not to be confused with resignation, a passive acceptance of the inevitable. Nor is it a process of detachment and ‘getting over it’, but rather a particular form of deepening relationship, a profound affirmation of our interdependency. It is not a letting go of the past, but a redemptive mode of remaining, searching how to let the lost others live on in our words and deeds. Mourning as response to the precariousness of life involves personal and collective transformation towards a shared future. In this light, Marian mourning – a compassionate standing with the wounded and the dead, a spiritual way of both remaining faithful to the lost and retrieving hope – might open a way of learning ‘peace-building dimensions of prophetic lament’ (Emmanuel Katongole). / Invited lecture, invited by: Australian Catholic University (Institute for Religion & Critical Inquiry), Science and Research Centre Koper, Institute for Philosophical Studies University of Notre Dame (Nanovic Institute for European Studies) in cooperation with Class VII of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Salzburg) / edition: International conference UNWOUNDED WORLD: A MARIAN PEACE FOR OUR SHARED FUTURE / status: published