Stabat Mater

Stabat Mater are the first two words of a traditional 13th century latin Catholic hymn dedicated to the experience of Mary at the foot of the cross. 

It begins with these words:   Stabat mater dolorósa juxta Crucem lacrimósa, dum pendébat Fílius which in English means...

At the Cross her station keeping, Stood the mournful Mother weeping, Close to Jesus to the last

It goes on: Cuius ánimam geméntem, contristátam et doléntem pertransívit gládius which in English means...

Through her heart, his sorrow sharing, All his bitter anguish bearing, now at length the sword has pass'd.

The hymn is quite long and the full text can be found here. There are several musical compositions chanted in Latin. One such version can be found here.

The Catholic Faith has always seen in Mary standing at the cross a model of co-suffering. We now usually call it redemptive suffering. The reference to the sword has to do with the prophecy of Simeon who warned Mary that her heart would be pierced by a sword, "And you yourself a sword will pierce" -Lk 2:35. 

At the foot of the cross and then in her cradling of the dead body of her Son after he was taken down fromn the cross, Mary provides an example of how we too may unite our suffering to Jesus on the cross.

Adrienne von Speyr was a 20th century Catholic mystic and close friend of Hans Urs von Balthasar a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest. In her book on the Blessed Virgin Mary titled, The Handmaid of The Lord, Von Speyr takes the reader deep into the mystery of Mary's example of redemptive suffering.

She uncovers the dynamics of Mary’s union in mission and how her suffering was uniquely bonded to the Son’s. At the foot of the cross Mary enters into her final climactic stage of assent to the second person of the Holy Trinity.

“Her first ascent was given to the angel in obedience to God and through him to the Spirit. At the cross she gave her assent to the Son in order to fulfill the will of the Son who was suffering according to the Father’s will. And the Father then received the Son together with his mother in a new and inseparable sacrifice.  Mary’s sacrifice and suffering did not add or take away from the sacrifice of Christ. She had the grace to participate in the “…superhuman, divine sufferings of the Son…”.

Von Speyr describes how God takes our human offerings and elevates them and transforms them into union with his supernatural suffering.

“…her whole humanity was drawn into her suffering. All her natural gifts and her capacity for devotion and self-sacrifice, her willingness to suffer with her son, the dread, the anguish and the sorrow, are all used, raised and translated into the supernatural” .

She goes on to say that this is the Church’s model of sacrifice.

“Through her it becomes self-evident that participation in the divine and redemptive suffering of Christ is possible”. According to Von Speyr, the extent of Mary’s suffering goes beyond the spiritual or emotional realm into the physical in a hidden way. “She would put her body as a shield before him in order to receive the blows intended for the Son. She would be wounded by the sword even before the nails were driven into his hands and the lance into his side” 

This at first sounds like figurative language for her spiritual suffering but she goes on to say…

“The Son allowed his mother to be wounded because she was his mother and was to share spiritually and physically in his mission…” . 

Von Speyr gives us a deeper insight on the dynamics of Mary’s physical suffering, “The sword that pierced her heart is sevenfold and the wounds are not merely spiritual” . “She received the wounds from the Holy Spirit in the same way that she received the fruit of the Holy Spirit in her body”.  Perhaps this is what Pope Leo XIII meant when he said,  Mary’s Heart was “pierced by the sword of sorrow” .

Pope John Paul II also holds her physical suffering to be true. He sees Mary’s suffering as partly physical, based on Col 1:24, “Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body which is the Church”. He says of her, “Mary offered a unique contribution to the Gospel of suffering, by embodying in anticipation, the expression of St. Paul,…she truly has a special title to be able to claim that she “completes in her flesh”-as already in her heart-“what is lacking in the suffering of Christ".     

So how could Mary survive taking on this intensity of Christ’s suffering? Von Speyr explains that it was due to both her Immaculate Conception and actual grace given on Golgotha.

“Her readiness was greater than her capacity; her readiness to endure greater than her power to endure. And since God looked upon her readiness, which surpassed her powers, she could do what she was unable to do”.

This seemingly superhuman feat of Mary at the cross is described as mysterious, supernatural and something which could hardly be imagined from a human point of view. The grace that filled her at her conception prepared her not only for the Incarnation and motherhood but God also had in view the necessity of that grace to stand by her dying Son on Golgotha. 

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Von Speyr, Adrienne. The Handmaid of The Lord. New York: David McKay Co., 1955.