Sacred Mysteries: A cake of sorrows eaten cheerfully once a year
Seeming to have Arabian antecedents, it is made with a leavened mixture of flour, egg yolks and olive oil, with sesame seeds, aniseed and lemon zest. Between two halves of the mixture, rolled thin, is spread angel's hair, a sugar preserve made from a kind of pumpkin. The edges are twisted shut in a rope pattern. Sugar is sprinkled on top. The cooked torta is about 12 inches across. Some people like it with chocolate inside, which seems to me quite wrong.
More difficult to appreciate culturally than the torta is the devotion that it accompanies. In its most florid presentation, the Virgin Mary is depicted in polychromatic statuary with seven sharp swords impaling her heart. Historically, the devotion was popular in Scotland in the Middle Ages, before Spain ever cottoned on to it.
It is a fundamentally biblical consideration, deriving from the words of the old man Simeon to the Virgin Mary at the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple: 'Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.' Some works of art show Mary stabbed by one mystical sword. By the late Middle Ages, five might be present, then seven.
There is a set of prayers that mark the Seven Sorrows in the form of a chaplet, a string of beads to count a Paternoster and seven Ave Marias recited while contemplating each of the biblical incidents. These are:
1 The prophecy of Simeon; 2 The flight into Egypt; 3 The loss for three days of the Boy Jesus in the Temple; 4 Witnessing of Jesus carrying the Cross; 5 The Crucifixion; 6 The deposition of the body of Jesus from the Cross; 7 Jesus's burial.
This subject matter touches on the central narrative of the life of Jesus, and by looking, as it were, through the eyes of his mother, a more arresting and empathetic focus is possible. If Mary, the first member of the Church is so moved, how can present-day followers be indifferent?
I think there is another way of regarding the devotion of the Seven Sorrows as practised the year round. People suffer sorrows from the fact of being human: bereavement certainly, perhaps the loss of a child. When a mourning mother or deserted spouse goes into a church where there is a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, she can see that an ally in heaven has been through similar sufferings, in an undoubted solidarity or whole-hearted compassion with Jesus, who as the Suffering Servant and the Son of God met death, followed by resurrection.
The popularity of the devotion to the Seven Sorrows was successfully promoted by the seven holy founders of the Servite Order. These men, whose feast day falls on February 17, were 13th-century cloth-merchants in Florence who left their prosperous trade to set up an order of mendicant friars – in other words, an association that professed poverty so that they had to beg for their daily bread. In that respect they resembled the Dominicans. While making the suffering and death of Jesus the centre of their spiritual lives, they attempted to emulate the hospitality and compassion of his mother.
In London, Servite friars settled in 1864 and still run the church of Our Lady of Dolours in the Fulham Road. Here was baptised Carlo Acutis, who on April 27 will become the first millennial to be canonised.
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There has not been any free meat in weeks. Luckily, the pantry still has extra donated food to offer. Guindon and I survey today's choices. Her teenage grandsons, Bentley and Liam, hover nearby. In April, these boxes were bursting with carrots, lettuce, apples, bread, almonds and crackers. Today, eight bruised apples barely cover the bottom of a box. In another, I cringe at an oozing nectarine. The day before, high winds had knocked out power to the local Hannaford. They lost much of their produce. This is the result. But then some gorgeous kale catches my eye. I spot magenta rhubarb longer than my arm. Local farms provided them. They will be a happy surprise for those at the front of the line. Bentley taps Guindon on the shoulder and points to his watch. 'Two minutes,' he says, glancing at the door. The boys preside over bags of bread and desserts. Before food began dwindling, patrons could take what they wanted from the heaping boxes I had seen in April. Now, Bentley and Liam hand it out to avoid hoarding. The doors finally open. The volunteers' quiet hum swells into a hubbub of conversation as patrons enter. I catch Mary's eye as she drops a $5 bill into a donation jar on the kitchen counter. That $5 is meaningful. No Greater Love's bank account has shrunk to $3,500, all of it allocated to rent, electricity, gas, vehicle maintenance and maybe some extra food, like the inexpensive leg of lamb. Guindon has already started on the next grant applications. The future of this food pantry and thousands like it now rests on their ability to raise private funds. For now, McGray and Guindon will put one foot in front of the other. They will send another box down the conveyor belt. They will welcome another new patron in the door. They will spend one more day fulfilling three generations' worth of persistence in the face of hunger. The doors are still open. So far.
