The INCLUSION delusion
Stations of the Cross (4)
Fourth Station:
Jesus meets His Mother
We adore you O Christ and we praise you,
because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
Our Lord’s journey to Calvary must have been a lonely one indeed.
After having been betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, and abandoned by His friends, He was now being mocked by the soldiers, and jeered by the many of the same people that had hailed Him as the Messiah only a few days before. The One who lived from all eternity in perfect communion and fullness of unity with the Father, was now well on His way to experiencing the desolation of Sin — the total separation and isolation from His Father.
That is what sin is at its essence: desolation, separation, alienation from God, from our neighbor, from our nature, from our freedom, from ourselves. This is what caused Jesus’ agony at Gethsemane the night before… not that He was going to die (many people have faced death heroically throughout history). What brought anguish to Jesus’ heart was that His journey towards the Cross, was also a journey away from His Father, and every step He took brought upon Him pain and suffering greater than anything the soldiers could inflict.
But, just as the Father’s presence was fading from Jesus, His Mother was there to console Him, just as she had done throughout His life: in Bethlehem, Egypt, and Nazareth; at the wedding in Cana; at the multiplication of the loaves and the Sermon on the Mount; at the anointing at Bethany, the entrance to Jerusalem, and the Last Supper. And now, she was with Him again, as He marched ignominiously to Golgotha, the Place of the Skull.
Throughout her life, her concern had always been for the well-being of her Son, not hers. From the moment of the angel’s announcement that she would be the Mother of God, her whole life was focused on Him, and so it was now!
And yet, she was in the midst of her own journey to the cross. Simeon had told her some thirty years before that her heart would be pierced by a sword, but only now did she understand the full magnitude of that prophecy. A couple of hours more, and the final blow would be dealt to her under the Cross when Jesus would push her even farther away by telling her that John would now be her son, not Him.
Still, she was there. She understood what was happening, but her mother’s love could take her nowhere else but where her Son needed her most. And, we can be sure that Our Lord felt her consolation, her love, her pure and gentle touch… even her encouragement to complete the mission the Father had given Him to do.
This Fourth Station reminds us that, whenever we are going through a difficult time and it seems like nobody else is around to help us, not even God, our Blessed Mother is always there, bringing us her presence, her tears, her consolation, her protection, her perfect Mother’s love.
She understands what we are going through because she experienced the whole range of human emotions and sufferings herself. As a teenager, she was asked to participate in God’s plan for the salvation of the world. That in itself would have been enough to overwhelm us. But then she, the Immaculate Conception, the purest human being who ever lived, was asked to conceive a child out of wedlock, opening herself to the suspicions and gossip of the people in her hometown.
As the time to have her child approached, she was forced to make a long and difficult journey to deliver her baby in a stable, in the midst of the smell and noise of farm animals.
Not long after that, she had to go into exile in the middle of the night to protect her child from a murderous king.
A few years later, she had to endure the anguish of losing her child, not for five minutes in a mall, but for three days in a crowded city.
When her Son finally began His public ministry, she had to watch in sorrow as the people of Nazareth, the same people who had seen Him grow up, drove Him out of the synagogue in anger and tried to throw Him off a cliff. And now, here she was, stealing a moment with her Son as He climbed the hill of Calvary.
Hardly a bed of roses! And yet, this was Mary’s life — giving everything she had to bring Christ to the world, only to watch the world push Him away again, and again, and again. Through it all, she never questioned. All she did, even when she didn’t understand, was to say: “Let it be done to me according to your word.”
That is why she is the quintessential model of Christian discipleship. She teaches us through her own example how to listen to and act on the word of God, never putting ourselves first, but always allowing God’s will to be done through us. The good news for us, is that we have something she didn’t, we have HER, not just to show us the way, but also to walk with us on our walk to the cross, just as she walked with her Son on His.
Jesus must have felt a tremendous sense of peace and consolation when He met his Mother on the way to the Cross. That same consolation, that same Mother’s warmth and protection, is available to us as well, but it can only be truly experienced by those who have an authentic relationship with Mary, as Jesus obviously did.
And perhaps the best way that we can build that relationship is to renew our devotion to the rosary. The rosary is the perfect Marian prayer because it invites us to reflect not only on the mysteries of our salvation, but also on how Mary walked side-by-side with Jesus to make that salvation possible.
Mary wants to walk with us on our journey through life, both in happy moments and sad. Let us invite her into our lives.
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