I know it's been a long time since I've posted. Sorry about that! Things are going well! Recently I gave a talk to a men's retreat here at the Abbey, and I converted my talk into an article. I would like to share it with you. It might help in your mediations for Holy Week! I'll try to post more about life here at the Abbey sometime soon! God bless!
Standing with Mary at the Foot of the Cross
Father Jay
Kythe
April 5,
2014
This reflection is based in part from Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon. Scripture quotes are from his
citations.
The Third Word from the Cross: When
Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, 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.
The image of Mary at the foot of the Cross: this is a great opportunity
to put ourselves in the sandals of the beloved disciple. Throughout my life I have had an image
of myself at the foot of the Cross, my arm around Mary’s shoulders, me trying
to comfort her. This has nourished
me greatly in my spiritual life, as I traced the steps of the Via Dolorosa and applied it to my life.
I often wondered, did she know that this was the way of strange glory by
which her Son would conquer sin and death? We do not know.
Perhaps she remembered old Simeon who was probably dead by that
time. She would certainly remember
his words: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and the rising of many in
Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against, and a sword will pierce your own
soul also, that the thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.” How often had she wondered about this,
pondered these words for all those years, and realizing that this is happening
at that moment? How she had to
endure the piercing sword of grief at the foot of the Cross!
We know she did this from the beginning. When the shepherds came to worship the baby and told her
what the angels had said, “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her
heart.” She would look down at the
babe and wonder many things. From
her He received His Jewish humanity: the color of his eyes, the cut of his
nose, that odd way of smiling. She
potty trained Him, taught Him His first words, encouraged His first steps,
kissed His scuffed knee and made it all better, ... all as she pondered
prophecies about piercing swords and wondered about that King from the East who
gave myrrh, an ointment for burial, at the event of a birth. She and Joseph found Him lost in the
temple, she was there for His first miracle. They could not have
been closer.
Recall the Dialogue at Cana: “They have no more wine.” “O woman, what have you to do with
me? My hour has not yet
come.” “Do whatever he tells
you.”—the last recorded words of Mary in the New Testament. How fitting!
She had to learn an important lesson, which perhaps we get a glimpse at
Cana,
a lesson all
mothers (and fathers, especially with respect to their daughters) need to
learn, to let go, to let their sons go on the way they must go. The love that lets go is never easy. Such love has to be learned. It approaches the truest form of love,
an ultimate other-directedness, a total lack of selfishness, agape-love that is willing to let go of
the other.
We see perhaps the first lesson of having to let go in the scene of St.
Joseph and Mary searching for Jesus in the Temple. Jesus says, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my
Father’s house?” What a thing for
a 12 year old to say! But we can
also note that He returns home, obedient to His earthly parents. And once again we come upon the line, “And
his mother kept all these things in her heart.” He was back with her, but something was different, something
has happened that can never be undone.
Between Jesus and Mary another will came in to separate, an infinitely
greater will, the will of the heavenly Father.
To this
will, every other relationship took second place.
As it should be in the spiritual life of the Christian.
Recall once again the words at Cana: “Woman, what have you to do with
me? My hour has not yet
come.” We do not have evidence
that Mary was offended, nor did she question about His hour. All she did was say to the servants, “Do
whatever he tells you.”
The Synoptics tell the story that the crowds were pressing in on Jesus,
and Mary and His brethren came in to speak with Him. Jesus says, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Looking around, He said, “Here are my
mother and my brothers! Whoever
does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.” What did Mary think? Yes, I know, she fits the criterion spoken
by Jesus very well, but she is still His mother. Was she disappointed, perhaps at some level?
And then there was another day when someone in the crowd cries out, “Blessed
is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” Yet Jesus responds, “Blessed rather are
those who hear the word of God and keep it.” Also here Mary fits this criterion, but how did she feel
about that as well?
I’d like to think it was like at Cana. I believe that at Cana she simply accepted the words of
Christ without question and walked away, happy that God’s will is being
done. She pointed something out
and stepped aside, confident that God will act. This is the quality of great saints, to surrender and leave
things in God’s hands. If water
had not changed into wine, if the wedding couple were left humiliated, Mary
would still have trusted that somehow this would work for good in their lives. This is the mark of heroic virtue in the
lives of saints, that the entire world could just as well fall apart and yet I
shall remain secure with my Lord, trusting that He will bring a greater good
out of a great evil. This is a
lesson we all have to learn.
And
Mary had to learn it too. We can
say: oh Mary, it seems He has no more time for you. Even when it comes to taking care of Him, to doing the big
and little things that a mother wants to do, it seems you are excluded. In Luke 8 we hear about the holy women
who followed Jesus and provided for Him, but your name wasn’t on the list. Was that okay with you?
Mary learned the hard love of letting go, the love that is forged in
surrender to a love greater than our own, the love that grows beyond all
possessing. Paradoxically, in this
distancing love is a deeper love and discipleship, for Mary is considered the
first of the disciples. All
generations shall indeed call her blessed!
Surrender: the Scriptures calls this kenosis,
the surrender of all that we hold most dear, and for Mary, it was the surrender
of her dearest. Long before they
looked at one another on Golgotha’s place of strangest glory, they had been
prepared by many little surrenders for this surrender by which all was
restored. The way of the Cross is the way of broken hearts.
We live in a life of desiring empowerment, fulfillment, self-esteem, and
self-actualization. Yet the
Christian message is the opposite:
“The disciple is not above the master.” “The first shall be last and the last first.” “He who would find his life must lose
his life.” “Take up your cross and
follow me.” And Mary adds the
words “Do whatever He tells you.”
And in her loss, the loss of her Son and the loss of herself, she
discovered “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
“He who would find his life must lose his life.” The spiritual life and the Christian
moral life are filled with such paradoxes. And when we try to live this way, we feel like we are going
against the grain.
Or maybe we’re not. Maybe
we’ve been so accustomed to going against the grain of our humanity that we
have confused ourselves about which way the grain runs. Recall the famous words of St
Augustine: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless
until they rest in You.” Recall also
the old Catechism question “Why did God make me?” “To know and love and serve Him in this life and to enjoy
Him forever in the next.” If we
get this question wrong, we get everything else wrong. Perhaps in following our humanity, we
will reach God; but man has gotten used to not
following his humanity. Man has
gotten used to following things that are contra
naturum, against human nature, the way God intended it. So if we lose ourselves in God, we end
up finding ourselves. If God made
us that way, this should make sense.
At the foot of the Cross, Mary and Jesus were probably eye-to-eye, almost
at eye level, at least looking at each other’s faces. Much later, beginning in the Middle Ages, artists would
depict a very tall cross, with Mary and the others far below at its foot. But historians think that the Cross was
probably about seven feet tall.
She would have seen quite clearly the Holy Face in agony. She would have heard His words, the
seven Last Words. There was
nothing else to do but just to be there.
And so we return back to the image I started with, standing with Mary at
the foot of the Cross.
We are familiar with the beautiful poem Stabat Mater dolorosa: At the Cross her station keeping. Perhaps it was written by St
Bonaventure, and it was set to music by some of the greatest composers. Antonin Dvorak composed his Stabat Mater in 1878 after losing three
children in three years.
The image of being at the foot of the Cross appeals to us because we
shall all face darkness in our lives, and in the heart of darkness are the
hearts of Jesus and Mary, for both descended into that darkness in order to
provide hope for those whose hope is slipping away.
Weeping at
the cross, Mary is both the mother of sorrows and the mother of hope.
Here is our lesson: letting God have His way, even when it brings us to
the Cross. Life is at God’s
disposal, kept in readiness for what He may desire. By saying Yes to the angel and agreeing to be mother of God,
she had created a situation beyond her control. This is about the imitation of Mary: surrendering as she
did. By taking Mary into our home as
did the beloved disciple, we can give her the opportunity to teach this lesson
to us, and in turn teach this lesson to others.
The first example is of the beloved disciple who surrendered to God
through Mary (and learned from her by imitating her virtue of surrender). We don’t know much about the life of
St. John, but it is said that he was exiled to the island of Patmos. As he surrendered to this will of
Divine Providence, he opened himself to everything the Father wanted to do in
his life. So he wrote the Gospels,
which reveal Christ as the Son of God in glory; the letters, which are a
fantastic exposition of love; and the book of Revelations, which speak of the
glory to come. It is as if he
said—when he spoke in his first letter of “that which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked
upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made
manifest and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life
which was with the Father and was made manifest to us ....”—in other words,
“Mother Mary and I, we saw it!” “...by this we know love, that he laid down his
life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Humanity is capable of great
self-transcendence in surrender to the Other. We are capable of magnanimous love. It is worth remembering this when we
see people doing bad things. There
are probably more good examples than bad, but in our fallenness we get
discouraged and remember that one bad thing out of the one hundred good ones.
The Cross is the axis mundi,
the place and the moment upon with all reality turns. It is the Cross that binds John to Mary, and all beloved
disciples to Mary and through Mary to one another in a mutual gift of
self. When St Paul declares, “It
is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,” Mary ends up having many sons
and daughters, her Son living in us.
“Behold, your son!”—meaning, behold your Christ is here too! Mary, then did not lose her Son on the
Cross; she gains sons and daughters beyond number, in all of whom the glory of
Christ abides!
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” Christ utters from the
Cross. Mary heard these words and
could herself continue the words of that Psalm 22 along with Jesus, words He
did not say from the Cross but were there implicitly: “Yet thou art he who took
me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother’s breasts. Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and
since my mother bore me thou hast been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none
else to help.”
How close were Jesus and Mary!
Perhaps she thought of those words and thought of the times of caring
for him as a babe, whispering the words of the Archangel Gabriel to him in the
second person: “You will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give you the throne of your father David, and you will
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of your kingdom there will be no
end.” Mary did not know what it
all meant, and the babe smiled at the sound of her voice of the mother for whom
the word “you” meant her life and her all.
Yet on the Cross, those words of surrender and calling upon the Lord most
High may have helped her to do the same.
Little surrenders throughout her life preparing her for this big
one. And beside her stood the
beloved disciple, watching it all.
The mother would come to understand that from the beginning, she was
held by the One whom she held. The
beloved disciple would understand this too and would express it in different
ways in his writings, writings that came out of his contemplative heart.
How much of this he learned from Mary and how much of this he learned by
being open to the Father’s will is unknown. But in his surrender, he revealed much about the spiritual
life that can only be learned in surrender to the Father’s will. I daresay he couldn’t have contributed
what he did to the Catholic faith without first surrendering to Divine
Providence! All in imitation of
Mary, whom he brought into his home.
At the beginning I spoke of myself in the place of the Beloved Disciple
at the foot of the Cross. “And he
took her into his home.” This
image has changed for me, especially as I considered myself as a beloved disciple
and began bringing everything, especially the ugliness of life, to the foot of
the Cross. With each instance of
grief, I began noticing something different. Now the image is of Mary comforting me at the foot of the Cross.
Human drama should be lived out at the foot of the Cross. Why not being there with Mary? Taking everything there, the good, the
bad, and the ugly.
In your prayer, I encourage this meditation: you at the foot of the
Cross. What would you like to
bring to Jesus? What is Mary’s posture? What is your posture? What is Mary’s posture towards you and
you towards Mary, and both towards Jesus?
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