A Reflection for the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church
You can find today’s readings here.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved,
he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
I sometimes struggle to understand Mary. Especially here.
Dying on the cross hangs her beloved son, whom the angel Gabriel promised “will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:32-33). But for anyone watching, the crucifixion sure would have seemed like the end.
I cannot imagine how Mary bore losing her son, much less went on. But here, the church teaches Mary “thus became the tender Mother of the Church which Christ begot on the cross handing on the Spirit.” And next time we see her, she is praying with the disciples in the upper room after the Ascension.
Much is left unsaid about Mary in the time in between.
From Christ’s last words until after the Ascension, the profound grief and exuberant joy his mother must have felt are left to the imagination. Like many women, I sometimes feel that I could not possibly understand Mary. I struggle to place myself in her sinless shoes, to imagine the world through her grace-filled gaze.
But theologian Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., writes in Truly Our Sister that the Immaculate Conception does not mean that Mary “moved through life with unearthly ease.” Sister Johnson continues, “In this interpretation Mary’s uniqueness dehumanizes her. She was perfect. Cocooned in a bubble of privileges, her very humanity is bleached of blood and guts.”
To understand our church, and perhaps the nature of Christian life altogether, we must face the bitter reality in which Mary began to nurture and grow the church. We owe it to Mary to take her humanity, and this act of immense hope, seriously.
Sister Johnson emphasizes the human reality at the heart of today’s Gospel: “Mater Dolorosa is not a theological concept or a symbolic image or an archetypal experience, but a real person who got hit one day with the terrible fact that her firstborn son was dead by state execution.”
For centuries, religious art has tried to realize this moment, perhaps the most famous example being Michelangelo’s Pietà, which imagines Mary holding Jesus’ body after the crucifixion. America’s Good Word columnist, the Rev. Terrance Klein, argued that the sculpture has a “significant flaw,” namely, its scale. “If the dead figure of Jesus were to stand erect, he would be about six feet tall. If his Mother Mary, who holds him in her lap, stood up, she would be more than twice that height,” Father Klein explained.
It struck me: The last time Mary held Jesus like this must have been when he was an infant. When else would he have been half her size? When else would she have cradled him just so, carefully supporting his neck?
The wonky scale invites us to view the scene from Mary’s perspective as a mother: The King of Kings is still her baby boy.
Holding her beaten and bloodied son, it is a miracle that she did not despair, that she did not assume the angel Gabriel’s promise to her had been broken. In the face of her seemingly insurmountable grief, she embraced the beloved disciple, and he took her into his home. They mourned and prayed together, treating each other as family, sowing the seeds of our church.
