Our Lady of Sorrows Pt. VI
The previous article can be found here.
“But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother…” John 19:25
The Crucifixion
After walking with her Son the entire way from the Praetorium to the side of Calvary, Mary heroically watches as her son is stripped of His clothes and then nailed to a Roman cross. The immense pain that Our Lord goes through is reflected in the extreme suffering of His mother in this new martyrdom. St. Bernard relays to us that He was nailed “not with sharp but blunt nails”1 so that the suffering would be made more intense. The intense hatred that the Romans have for the condemned is indicative of the sins that have nailed Him to this gibbet. Still, in all of this, Our Lord and Our Lady will in unison to save mankind.
St. Alphonsus Ligouri quotes St. Bridget of Sweden:
“My dear Jesus was breathless, exhausted, and in His last agony on the cross; His eyes were sunk, half closed, and lifeless; His lips hanging, and His mouth open; His cheeks hollow and drawn in; His face elongated, His nose sharp, His countenance sad: His head had fallen on His breast, His hair was black with blood, His stomach collapsed, his arms and legs stiff, and His whole body covered with wounds and blood.”2
The sight of her beloved hanging from the cross brought Mary the greatest suffering, not in worrying for herself, but out of such an immense love for her Son. She knows that her Son is the Incarnate Son of God. She knows that He is the most innocent person to ever be unjustly put to death. She knows that He is God and that He is taking the sin of the world on Himself.
Our Lady’s suffering at this time was immense as well. Imagine the pain of the mother watching her only Son die such a horrible death. The motherly instinct is to satiate the pain of her child. Imagine the times that Our Loday consoled the Child Jesus, perhaps if He fell in the street while playing. There was no consolation that she could give to her Son nailed to the cross. All she could do was watch from the foot of the cross. To this end, St. Alphonsus remarks:
“She saw that on that bed of torture her Son, suspended by three nails, could find no repose; she would have clasped Him in her arms to give Him relief, or that at least He might there have expired; but she could not.”3
She could not give relief to her great Love. There was no consolation for Our Lady as she stood looking up at God Incarnate.
Sorrowful Mother Standing
“At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping…”4
Our Lady encountered the suffering of the cross with heroic virtue. Commonly, it is easy to ascribe to her a weakness while at the foot of the cross. In many cases, some theologians and some artists have depicted Mary as succumbing to spiritual weakness or even despair when faced with the outrageous treatment of her Son.5 In reality, the strength that Mary displayed at the crucifixion and death of her Son was far greater than any martyr who has faced death in the history of Christendom. This is on account of the great grace that Mary had been given in her life. This grace perfected the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity and allowed Mary to stand at the foot of the cross and suffer with her Son.
The faith of Mary was the most perfect faith that has ever existed in a human person. Our Lord, according to St. Thomas, did not have the supernatural virtue of Faith since He possessed in His human soul, the beatific vision.6 For all others, who do not possess the beatific vision in a permanent manner, the virtue of faith is present in order to believe in what they do not see. Mary, being perfectly filled with grace,7 has the most perfect faith to ever be exercised by a human person. This allows her to both believe perfectly that her Son is God Incarnate and that His promises of the resurrection would come to be. Further, she has perfect faith that this redemptive act will bring about the fruit of the salvation of souls. She stands firm in faith at the foot of the cross, willing the redemption of mankind.
The perfect faith in Mary gives rise to the perfect hope in Mary. Hope is a desire to possess that which is not yet possessed.8 Thus the faith in the words of Christ that He would conquer death and rise again gave rise to the desire to possess the fulfillment of those words. In addition to this, Mary has the firmest hope that the salvation of souls will truly come from this. The path that her Son has been on since His baptism and the first miracle at Cana have come to their climax here on Calvary. This was the reason her Son was sent into the world. She has a great hope that He will fulfill the mission given to Him by the Father. From the very first moment of Mary’s fiat,9 she has labored with her Son for the salvation of souls. Here, on the altar of the cross, it will be consummated. She looks on in agonized hope for the redemption of mankind.
Hope then gives rise to perfect Charity. Our Blessed Mother shares in the Love which God has for mankind. As it is out of love for us that she has given her only begotten Son. Just as the Father has given, so has the Mother given. Fundamentally, this was a choice by her. She was asked to be the mother of Christ knowing of the great suffering that it would entail and yet she lovingly gives her Son for the redemption of mankind. We need to go back 33 years to the presentation in the temple when St. Simeon prophesied that a sword would pierce her heart.10 This is not only a prophecy but a revelation which she graciously accepts on behalf of mankind. In her great love, which is conformed to God through grace, she offers her Son in reparation for the sins of mankind. In this great act of love, Mary becomes the Queen of all Martyrs as she is perfectly conformed to Jesus Christ, the Martyr.
Co-Redemption
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; she shall crush your head, and you shall bruise her heel.” Genesis 3:15
It is at the foot of the cross that Marian Co-Redemption reaches its apex. It is here that the poetry of Salvation History is fully realized. God originally placed a man and a woman in the garden and gave them human natures infused with grace with a desire to live in communion with them. These two rejected that plan in favor of the worldly good of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Through this original sin, man fell and required redemption. Just as it was through a man and woman that man fell, so too, is it through a man and a woman that man is redeemed. St. Irenaeus of Lyon comments on this:
“Adam had to be recapitulated in Christ, so that death might be swallowed up in immortality, and Eve [had to be recapitulated] in Mary, so that the Virgin, having become another virgin’s advocate, might destroy and abolish one virgin’s disobedience by the obedience of another virgin.”11
This recapitulation is a reordering of creation through the New Adam and New Eve. This is why God promises to send a woman who is at odds with the serpent. Not only is she at odds with him, but she also crushes the serpent’s head through her Seed. This dramatic scene is fully realized at the foot of the cross.
St. John records Our Lady as standing at the foot of the cross for the crucifixion:
“But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” John 19:25
We want to remember that the place where Our Lord is dying is rendered as Golgotha in the Hebrew, which means the place of the skull.12 Mary is literally standing on the place of the skull. It was a place of death, one where many who were condemned for violent crimes met a most violent end. The significance of this should not be overlooked: sin, which carries with it the sentence of death is being overcome through death in a place of death. Thus, Mary, the woman prophesied in the Book of Genesis to crush the skull of the serpent through her seed is, indeed, standing on the place of the skull, crushing sin and death, through the death of her Divine Son.
This fulfillment of Genesis is seen in the co-passion of Jesus and Mary. St. Alphonsus Ligouri quotes Saint Augustine, “The cross and nails of the Son were also those of His Mother; with Christ crucified the Mother was also crucified.”13 This profound truth expresses the immense spiritual connection between the Mother and the Son. Closer to our age, Pope St. John Paul II echoes this same great mystery:
“The silent journey that begins with her Immaculate Conception and passes through the ‘yes’ of Nazareth, which makes her the Mother of God, finds on Calvary a particularly important moment. There also, accepting and assisting at the sacrifice of her Son, Mary is the dawn of redemption; and there her Son entrusts her to us as our Mother: ‘The mother looked with eyes of pity on the wounds of her Son, from whom she knew the redemption of the world had to come.’ (St. Ambrose, De Institutione Virginis, 49). Crucified spiritually with her crucified Son (cf. Gal. 2:20), she contemplated with heroic love the death of her God, she ‘lovingly consented to the immolation of this Victim which she herself have brought forth’ (Lumen Gentium, 58).”14
The language used by St. John Paul II is severe. He is linking the suffering of the Son to the suffering of the Mother in the same way as the great St. Augustine. He goes deeper though. Applying to Mary a sense of sacrificial offering. She consents to the immolation of her Son and participates in the sacrifice. More than that, she is spiritually crucified with her Son. This can only happen through the deepest of spiritual bonds. She literally experiences a co-passion.
Finally, in a sense completing the role of Co-Redemptrix, Mary is given to the Church as our Mother:
“When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”15
Mary is given into the care of St. John, and by extension, she is given into our care. At the same time, we are given into her care. It is at this moment that Mary becomes spiritually pregnant with the Church. Truly, the birth pains that were absent from her in bringing forth the Savior are experienced here at the foot of the cross with us, her children, for whom she has given her everything.
Finally, at the three o’clock hour, the Sorrowful Mother watches as her Son takes His final breath and commends His soul to the Father. It is finished. The arch of redemption that began with the fiat of the Mother in Nazareth years prior reaches its providential conclusion. Just as Mary ushered in the redemptive act with her yes at the Annunciation, so too, does she bring it to its conclusion with her yes at Jerusalem. For both the mother and the son: it is finished.
Let us pray,
O most sorrowful Mary, I compassionate that martyrdom which they generous heart endured in witnessing the last agony of Jesus. O beloved mother, by that martyred heart obtain for me the virtue of temperance and the gift of counsel.16
Hail Mary…
Sermon on the Passion, ii.
St. Alphonsus Ligouri, The Glories of Mary, 434.
Ibid. 435.
Stabat Mater
Just by way of summary, it was common for some of the Church Fathers to ascribe a weakness of sex to Our Lady since she was female. In reality, we ought to remember that many of them lived in a time that was biased towards the female sex and this is what informed their opinion on the matter. As we will show in this section, Mary’s response to the crucifixion of her Son was the farthest thing from weak.
See St. Thomas Aquinas, ST IIIa q. 7, a. 3, q. 10 and q. 34.
The Gospel of Luke records the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Mother with the Greek word Kecharitomene. This Greek word, only used here for Mary, means to be perfectly filled with grace at every moment of her existence, that is, from the moment of her conception to her glorification in heaven. This is the basis for the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Cf. Luke 1:28.
Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 17.
Cf. Luke 1:38.
Cf. Luke 3:35.
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Proof of Apostolic Preaching, 33.
Cf. John 19:17. St. Thomas comments on this citing St. Jerome, that it was a common error that the place of the skull was the burial place of Adam. St. Thomas says this is not true it is the place where the condemned were beheaded. Thus, it is fitting that Christ should die there so as to make it a place of martyrdom as well as to show that He is dying for all. Cf. Summa Theologiae IIIa, q. 46, a. 10.
St. Augustine as quoted by St. Alphonsus Ligouri, The Glories of Mary, 434.
Pope St. John Paul II, Homily given at Guayaquil, Equador, January 31, 1985.
John 19:26.
Blessed Be God, Preserving Christian Publications: Boonville, NY, 2022.
A very appropriate exposition for the feast day of the Exaltation of Holy Cross