Our Lady of Consolation (Saturday after the Feast of St. Augustine)

As part of the Traditional Missal, the Feast of Consolation occurs on the Saturday after the Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, which falls on August 28th.  This Feastday is kept by various religious orders in the Church.

The following is taken from Our Lady's Feastdays by Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D:

1. Mary, Mother of God, you are the Comforter of the Afflicted because in your lifetime you bore every sort of affliction and you can now sympathize with me in my sufferings. You willingly became the Mother of Jesus when you answered the message of the Archangel Gabriel with the words "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word" (Luke 36, 38). This marked the beginning of your life of suffering together with Jesus. Simeon prophesied it when you offered the little Victim-Savior to the Heavenly Father for the first time in the temple: "And thy own soul a sword shall pierce" (Luke 2, 35). You confidently accepted whatever God willed. You bore your sorrows bravely because you received them from God's hands. 

Three swords brought anguish to you while Jesus was yet a young child, four swords pierced your soul in His Holy Passion. Yet no selfish thought, no bitter resentment has marred your beauty. From the knowledge of the Will of God you gathered the strength that was to uphold you at the foot of the Cross on which your Son hung, dying. Through thirty-three years of Jesus' life on earth you suffered in silence. The climax of that sorrow came when the innocent Victim for the sins of mankind was given, dead, into your arms. Your loving submission to the Divine Will could not dry your tears, but it quieted the agony of your mother-heart. 

Mary, My Mother, you associated yourself with the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus in order that you might share in His glorification. You had to become the Mother of Sorrows before you were raised above the angels as Heaven's Queen. En life's dark hours you always remembered that you were God's handmaid, and you always wanted everything to be done according to His holy Will. Your heart was visited with seven swords of sorrow before you became the Comforter of the Afflicted and the Cause of our Joy. 

2. Mary, Mother of God, I pour out to you the sorrows of my own troubled heart. In your greater sorrow may my own be lost, and in calm resignation may my anguished soul find peace and strength. Through the sorrow which you felt during your whole life, but especially when you saw Jesus led to His death and then crucified, obtain for me the grace that I may patiently bear the sufferings which God has seen fit to send me, even as you bore your sufferings. Let this be my consolation to know that I am doing God's Will. I shall be blessed if I imitate you in bearing my cross till death. Since you bore a much heavier one together with your innocent Son, should not I, a sinner deserving of eternal punishments, carry mine patiently? Let me find consolation and strength in your favorite devotion—the rosary. 

When you lived in this valley of tears, you were ever loving and merciful toward the afflicted. How much more compassionate are you now since you reign happily in Heaven? Now you realize human misery more fully and, therefore, show your mercy and compassion and help more generously. You are indeed our Mother, and a mother can never forget her children. 

Mary, My Mother, I thank you for having suffered and wept for love of me that you might become my consolation in affliction. I entrust to you all my anxieties and needs so that through the merits of your sorrows I may bear the trials and sufferings of life with the same love and resignation to God's Will with which you bore yours. I beg you to make me strong enough to bear my trials for the love of God so that I may become like you in suffering. Help me to cling tightly to Jesus and to you. May each pain and disappointment of my life become a perfect act of love of God because I offer all to God through your immaculate hands. 

To you I entrust my soul for which Jesus died and I beg you to help me to save it. Protect me from the snares of the world, the flesh and the devil. And grant that after having suffered with you and your loving Son in this life, I may be glorified with You both in His Kingdom beyond the stars. 

3. Mary, Mother of God, I thank you for being my companion in suffering. You love me with a Heart human like my own—a Heart that can understand my sorrows and problems since you experienced all that I must bear; a Heart that can sympathize with me and befriend me in my hour of need. Not all the affection you pour out upon countless other souls lessens your love for me. Even when I forget you and begin to complain in my sufferings and crosses, you try to console me. Even when I disappoint you by doing my best to shake off the cross God has placed upon my shoulders, you pray for me. When I have pain, you are ready to comfort and strengthen me. 

I am most grateful for such devoted love and sympathy. You are indeed the most wonderful Mother that has ever walked this earth. Teach me to answer such love with childlike confidence. I want to turn to you in all my pressing needs and difficulties as to a most sure refuge, imploring the help of your protection, choosing you as my advocate, whole-heartedly entrusting my cause to you who are the Consoler of the Afflicted. But that my devotion may be acceptable and my homage pleasing, let me endeavor to maintain within my soul, as much as possible the spotlessness of your purity and try to walk in your footsteps humbly and gently. 

Mary, My Mother, I unite myself with you in the spirit in which you offered yourself as a sacrifice of love during your lifetime. Through your hands I offer myself with Jesus during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Give my heart sentiments like His and your own so that, through frequent Holy Communion and prayer, I may become a worthy co-victim with Jesus, holy and pleasing to God, and so that all the actions, sufferings, tears and disappointments of my life may be thus consecrated to God as a sacrifice for His glory and the salvation of souls, especially my own. Everything that God may send me, or permit in my life, whether favorable or unfavorable, sweet or bitter—even illness, is acceptable to me, for I have resolved, after your example to conform myself to the Divine Will in all things. Jesus invites me to do so, for He said, "Take my yoke upon you...My yoke is easy and My burden light" (Matt. 11, 29).