(Yea, a sword shall pierce through your own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. "Sword," in the Arabic version, lance; the Greek ζομφαία means both sword and lance or dart.
What is this sword?
1. Some understand doubt in her faith; that the Blessed Virgin, when she saw Christ suffering so fearfully from the violence of the Jews, and dying on the Cross, doubted as to whether He would rise again, as He had foretold. In this sense speak Origen (Hom. xvii.), Titus , Theophylact, and others. This, however, is an error, for such a feeling were unworthy [of] the Deipara, and that she experienced it is counter to the common sense of the Church. For so the Blessed Virgin would have sinned by unbelief. Indeed, the authors cited are sometimes explained as meaning by "doubt," admiration, mental perturbation, and inward questionings.
2. S. Eucherius of Lyons (Hom. in Dominicam), understands the sword of the Spirit—the word of God, i.e, the spirit of prophecy, as who...
And thy own soul a sword shall pierce. These words, which figuratively express the grief of the blessed Virgin mother, when present at the death of her Son, are to be taken by way of a parenthesis.
That out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed, and these are to be joined with what went before; to wit, that child shall be a sign of contradiction, set unto the fall and resurrection of many, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed and disclosed; when some shall believe, and others remain in their obstinacy. (Witham)
Ven. Bede, and many others, understand this of the sharp sorrow, which wounded the soul of the blessed Virgin Mary, at the time of Christ's passion. (Bar radius)
Carthusianus and Jansenius explain this passage as follows: Behold, this child is placed for a sign that shall be contradicted, which as a sword of most poignant grief will pierce thy soul, O Virgin! But Christ shall be contradicted, that the thoughts of the Jews may be revealed from many hearts, and it...
