She
had seven days of joy at least – once the pain of labor was over and the baby
had been born amidst the animals in the ancient barn at the edge of the Town of
Bethlehem. She had seven days of joy -
once she knew the child was safe, and she was warm and dry and comfortable
again. She had seven days of joy – when
she could innocently count his fingers and touch his tiny toes and look deep
into those newborn eyes that seemed to see something even beyond her who was
his mother.
She had seven days
of joy - kissing his forehead and deeply breathing in the odor of the newness
of him. She had seven days of joy -
feeling his warmth as he suckled at her overflowing breasts, and marveling at
the calm and stillness that surrounded him like an old comfortable blanket when
he slept.
She had seven days
of joy - basking in the pleasant astonishment that she was a mother (young
perhaps, but still a mother), all the while anticipating the close and abiding
relationship she would have with this tiny human, simply because she was his
mother and he was her son and because she was bound and determined to be the
best young mother around.
However, on the
eighth day, the sorrow that would doggedly follow her from Bethlehem to Egypt
to Nazareth to Cana and eventually several times over to Jerusalem began. She and Joseph took their baby, Jesus, to the
temple to be circumcised and blessed. When the three of them arrived, Simeon
the local priest sensed that this child was special, that this week-old baby was
the long-awaited Messiah. He took the
child in his arms and did what the Law of Moses required, and then he blessed
the baby.
When the old priest
gave the little one back to his mother, he smiled a sad but knowing smile and looked
deeply into her eyes. Then he spoke
those few words that would haunt her until the end of her days, for they would
turn out to be a shadow of everything to come.
“Mary, your child will be a figure that is contradicted and
misunderstood….and sorrow, like a sharp sword, will pierce your heart.”
Mater
Dolorosa: Mother of Sorrows. That was Mary.
From
then on, the times of sorrow just kept rolling over her. They were like a flood of mighty waters that seemed
to quench the love she and her son should have shared, and so often seemed to
drown it.
There was Joseph’s
dream, the one where the angel told him that they had a lot to fear from King
Herod, that he would kill
the child she had carried inside of her for nine long months and now was
raising as best as she and Joseph could.
Joseph told her that the angel said that they had to leave Nazareth, and
Mary knew well-enough that ignoring an angel – even in a dream – would only
bring sorrow. Little did she know that
following the angel’s instructions would result in the same thing.
They packed up
their sparse belongings and fled their hometown. One legend has it that the
soldiers almost found the Holy Family. They nearly put an end to Jesus right
there on the road outside of Nazareth that led them toward Egypt. In that tale, Mary heard the soldiers coming
and hid the baby in a nearby scrubby bush.
Terrified, she prayed for his safety and prayed even more that he would
not cry out or give them all away. The
bush miraculously sprouted waxy green leaves and thorns and bright red
berries. The baby remained silent, and
the soldiers passed, and the family stayed safe in the holly bush that, for a
precious moment, had held in its branches the heart of the Christ Child.
The Holy Family
made their way to Egypt. They were
refugees fleeing the violence in their homeland. Word reached them
that Herod’s henchmen were methodically murdering every boy child under the age
of two. Surely Mary wondered why so many
innocents died and yet her child lived.
And her sorrow grew and began to squeeze her heart.
Mater
Dolorosa: Mother of Sorrows. That was Mary.
Years
later, Jesus, her son, her firstborn, struck out on his own, convinced that he
was called to be a rabbi and teacher – but convinced also he could do it without
the necessary training. Who did he think
he was, leaving his family high and dry? You see, in those days family bonds
were tight and long-lasting. Children
lived close to their parents, and houses were often occupied by multiple
generations.
The family unit was
often the business unit as well. Everything was shared and held in common. Loyalty to the family was one of the pillars
of first century Jewish society.
And so as Christian author Frederick
Buechner writes, “It's not hard to imagine her (Mary) sorrowing again when
Jesus left a good, steady job in Nazareth to risk his neck wandering around all
over creation to proclaim whatever it was he thought he was proclaiming. Part
of her sorrow was presumably that she loved him too much for himself instead of
for the wild and holy business he thought he'd been called to.
Another part must have been that like just
about everybody else who was closest to him in Nazareth, she never really
understood what he thought he was doing and may well have been one of the ones
who, when he went back home once, decided he must be off his rocker. ‘He is
beside himself (insane),’ they said and tried to lock him up for his own good.”
That was the same time that she
and a couple of her other sons were so concerned about Jesus and the
rabble-rousing he was inciting and, well, you know, that thin line between
genius and insanity that they set out to bring him home before he went
completely over the edge and had a nervous breakdown.
They found him teaching in a
home, and the place was packed - standing room only. There was no way that Mary and her sons could
get in, so they sent a message. “Tell the teacher that his mother and brothers
are outside.”
When Jesus got the message, his
flip response was this, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Then, he turned
to the crowd that hung on his every word and cryptically declared: “Behold, you are my mother and my brothers!
For whoever does the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and
mother.” (Mark
3:35)
When Mary was told what he had
said and realized that her son had just thrown out thousands of years of Jewish
tradition, not to mention the pain he had brought her in fell one swoop, she
turned away with Jesus’ brothers. They
went back to Nazareth, and she was filled with sorrow once again.
And then, there was the wedding
in Cana when she told Jesus that the reception wine was gone. Jesus could
easily have taken his mother aside and privately told her to mind her own
business, but instead he chose a public rebuke.
He might well have said that the newly married couple should have found
a better wedding planner, but he settled for an irritated and abrupt
putdown. “Woman (he said to his mother),
what have you to do with me?”
As
Frederick Buechner wrote, “For all the sentimentalizing that their relationship has come in for
since, there's no place in the Gospels where he (Jesus) speaks some special,
loving word or does some special, loving thing for the woman who gave him
birth. You get the idea that he felt he couldn't belong truly to anybody unless
he somehow belonged equally to everybody.
They were all his mothers and brothers and
sisters, and there's no place in the record where he offers her anything more
than he offered everybody else.” Only sorrow, that is. Boat loads of sorrow.
Mater Dolorosa: Mother of Sorrows. That was Mary.
However, in
spite of the sorrow that followed her like a dark and angry cloud, Mary never
stopped being Jesus’ mother. Maybe you
cannot ever stop being a mother once you have given birth. I was once told that
when your child turns eighteen, you do not have to parent him or her any more. They
are on their own. Personally, I never found that child-rearing advice to be
untrue. No matter what your child does
at whatever age, no matter how many barriers he or she puts up between the two
of you, you are still that child’s mother – to the very end.
And so, we
should not be surprised that Mary tracked the movements of her son as best she
could without benefit of Twitter, Facebook, and GPS. And when she knew his demise must surely be
near, she was not content staying at home, simply hoping for the best to befall
him.
She followed him – filled to overflowing
with the years of sorrow, but now also filled with such anxiety – followed him
to Jerusalem, where they had once traveled as a family to celebrate the
Passover feast when Jesus was twelve.
That was the time, she remembered, when he
got lost and she and Joseph found him with the priests and elders in the Temple. That was the time when, in that painful way
with words he had even back then, he let her know in no uncertain terms that she
would never – could never - be number one in his life. Even now her eyes still filled with tears of
sorrow whenever she thought about that day.
But now, she was in the crowd lining
the street as he made his way through the Holy City gate, staggering under the
weight of the cross he was doomed to carry to his death on the God-awful
Calvary Hill. Jesus saw his mother.
Their eyes met, and for one solitary moment they understood each other.
Mary knew who her son was. She
knew from whence he had come and what his mission had been all along. Mary
knows too that she is his mother - and so she suffers. In her silence, she weeps because there is
nothing – nothing - she can do to save him -
or make his way on this Road of Tears any easier.
Mater
Dolorosa: Mother of Sorrows. That was Mary.
She
followed him all the way to Golgotha – trying to take some of his pain upon
herself – as any mother would do for her child.
She knelt at the foot of the cross that he writhed upon. She stroked his
bleeding feet and ran her fingers over the iron nail that held them in
place.
In that moment, did she wonder
if all the sorrow he had brought upon her had been worth it? Did she wonder if she should have raised him
differently? Did she wonder if she had been
a good mother? Did she wonder where she
had failed? Did she wonder if he even
knew her now, if he even cared one whit that she stood at the foot of the cross
where he would soon die, that he cared one iota that she had tried – and, from
her perspective, most likely failed – to be the mother he needed? Did he love her as much as she had tried so
hard to love him?
And
then (and this is Frederick Buechner again), “cross-eyed with pain, he looked
down from where they'd nailed him and said something just for her. Even here he
didn't call her his mother, just "woman" again, and he didn't say
good-bye to her or anything like that. But it's as if here at last he finally
spoke to the awful need he must have always sensed in her. ‘Behold your son,’
he said, indicating the disciple who was standing beside her, and then to the
disciple, ‘Behold your mother’. It was his going-away present to her really, somebody to be
the son to her that he had had no way of being himself, what with a world to
save, a death to die”.
And
so, he died. The Roman soldiers ran a
spear through his side just to be sure.
He was dead. A couple of friends
took him down from the cross, and he fell into his mother’s arms – like a
child, like the baby who had suckled at her breast once long ago. Pieta – pity – compassion: Mary cradled the
torn body of her son. Mary his mother - the
only one who was with him at his birth and at his death. And the disciple whom Jesus loved who now
had, in Mary, a mother, and she a son, put his arm around her shoulder and
hustled her off, both of them weeping, all the sorrow of all the years flowing
out of her in a flood of tears.
Mater
Dolorosa: Mother of Sorrows. That was Mary.
