Believers commemorate seven pains of the Mother of God during this day, And Simeon’s prophecy about the fate of her son in Jerusalem’s temple at the 40th day after the birth of the Son of God, the escape of Mary and Joseph with the Little Jesus to Egypt before King Herod, seeking a 12-year-old Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem, meeting Mary with his son on the Cross. The fifth pain was the sight of Mary to nail and die of Jesus on the cross, the sixth was the adoption of the dead Jesus into his mother’s arms, and the seventh deposits of Jesus in the grave.
The symbol through which Slovak believers express the respect of the Seven -Sorrowed Virgin Mary, the Šaštínska pieta – the statue of a sitting mother of God with the dead Christ in his arms. Respect for the Seven -Sorrowed Virgin Mary has gained such intensity in Slovakia that Pope Pius XI. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the provisions of the Seven -Sorrowed holiday for the whole holiday (in 1722) he issued an official document on the declaration of the Seven -Sorrowed Virgin Mary as Patrona of Slovakia, as well as Slovaks living abroad.
In 1964 Pope Paul VI. He declared the Slovak National Shrine in Šaštín as a basilica (Basilica Minor). The Šaštín temple thus became the first basilica in Slovakia. Every year Thousands of pilgrims on the occasion of the Feast of the Seven -Sorrowed Virgin Mary meet in Šaštín at the National Pilgrimage.
