The Standing Mother

John 19:25-27

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother
• Woman, behold, your son
• Behold, your mother
• the disciple took her into his home

Applying the Word to My Life:

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

Through her heart, his sorrow sharing, All his bitter anguish bearing, Now at length the sword had passed.

Those words from the Stabat Mater — Latin for "the mother was standing" — were written centuries after Mary stood beneath the Cross, but they reach all the way back to something Simeon had told her when Jesus was still an infant in her arms: "you yourself a sword will pierce."

Now, at last, the sword had arrived.

By the time Jesus was hanging on the Cross, almost everyone who had followed Him was gone. When He was arrested, the disciples scattered. John's Gospel gives us only one of the Twelve back at Golgotha, the disciple Jesus loved, standing there beside Mary.

She could not stop what was happening. She could not pull out the nails, order the soldiers away, or take her Son down and make Him well again. There was no problem left for her to solve. All that remained was the choice between leaving because she could do nothing and staying because she loved Him.

Mary stayed.

That answer feels familiar.

Years earlier, an angel had brought Mary a future she could not possibly understand and she answered, "Fiat." Mary's yes made room for Christ to enter the world through her.

At the Cross, nobody asks her the question out loud. By then nobody needed to.

My wife and I have been married for more than twenty-five years. After that much life together, not everything has to be said anymore. A look across a room can carry an entire conversation. I can hear something in the way she says one word that nobody else would notice. Sometimes simply staying beside someone speaks more clearly than anything you could say.

I wonder if Mary's silence at the Cross is something like that, only deeper.

The woman who had once told God yes with her voice was now saying it with her whole body simply by remaining where love had placed her. The first fiat had brought her to Bethlehem. This one kept her at Calvary.

And from the Cross, Jesus gives her something else to carry.

At the very moment Mary is losing her Son, Jesus opens her motherhood outward. The beloved disciple receives her into his home. But tradition tells us this moment is much more than Jesus simply making arrangements for Mary's care. Christians ever since have heard those words addressed to us as well. She adopts you individually. Mary, Mother of the Church.

Her first yes made room for the Body of Christ — Jesus himself — to call her mother. At the Cross, her silent yes makes room for the Body of Christ — the Church — to call her mother.

There is something here I need to remember because I tend to measure love by what I can accomplish.

If someone I love is hurting, I want to fix it. If there is a problem, I want a solution. If I cannot make the situation better, I can start to wonder what good I am doing there at all.

Mary could do absolutely nothing to stop Good Friday.

But she could stay.

Maybe that is one of the hardest forms of love because there is no accomplishment to hide behind. No advice to give. No problem to solve. Nothing that lets me walk away feeling useful.

There is only another person suffering and the decision not to leave them alone in it.

Mary's love did not require a solution. It required her presence.

Sometimes mine will too.

My Response for Today:
Today, when I cannot fix something for someone I love, I'll resist the urge to disappear into helplessness. I'll stay.