A day in the life of Mary

 Today’s blog (John 19:25-34) sees Mary stood beneath the cross of Jesus, receiving John her son (and in him all those who are born spiritually of Mary), witnessing Jesus’ death, and His final indignity of having a spear driven through His side. And in such a scene, we see her become the Mother of the Church with a motherhood that far exceeds anything we have known or experienced in this life.

Mary is our model, standing before the cross of Jesus. This spectacle is the condition of her joy, for there is no longer any victory over sin and evil in this word except along the path driven by the Saviour through the heart of Satan’s kingdom. Victory – and the woman shall crush the head of the serpent, not as the flesh of Eve and of her fallen sons and daughters but as the first fruit of the New Adam in the name of whose merits she was preserved from all stain of original son. Her immaculate vocation, her glorious vocation, was the call to be His mother and in Him, the Mother of all his offspring, now beside the cross with her: the indomitable John, the constant Magdalene, and a small gathering of less well known but faithful supporters.

Sacred tradition teaches us that her birth of Jesus was without physical pain, but not this birth on Calvary; not this birth of the often treacherous brothers and sisters of her only Son. No sooner had she become a mother to them than she saw Jesus mocked in His thirst by the bitterness of vinegar, and then abused in his death by an unnecessary and vicious wound to His heart; Jesus, become a rag doll victim of the wild violence of men, the unthinking and unwitting objects of his prayers for their forgiveness. They know not what they do.

And through it all, there remains the joyous conviction of the fulfilment of the Father’s forming action: the Father’s forming action on her Son and on her, associated now with His labour of love that appears all but wasted and lost, as the rain lashes mercilessly down on her.

Must all Thy harvest fields be dunged with rotten death?

Where is your joy now, Mary? It is hidden in the depths of a heart that is held by His grace, unbroken by the worst the powers of evil throw at her and that the Father allows to strike her full on. The fiat in sorrow can only come from a deeper and more lasting fiat in joy. For God is love; and joy, mercy and peace are the essence of love.

But this is not today’s gospel, you say? It is yesterday’s, isn’t it? No, dear reader, don’t think like the progressives who declare today a step forward on yesterday and would rather we forgot the past. Time is circular, every part of it touching the same eternal truth, like a wheel around a hub or a circumference to its periphery. 

And so, Mary’s motherhood of the Church belongs to today and tomorrow. Her example and her care are there always. We only need look for it.