09/15/2025
John 19:25-27 Standing by the
cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of
Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there
whom he loved 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.
There are some human experiences in
which men will always be on the outside looking in, while women will be on the
inside looking out. And those experiences are how a mother brings a baby into
the world, and how a mother grieves the death of a child. That is, men do not
experience the pain of pregnancy and they likewise cannot experience the pain
of child loss in the same way. Here we men have everything to learn and women
have everything to teach.
Thus on the Memorial of Our Lady of
Sorrows, a woman would do a better job of preaching than a man. But since that
is not possible in the Catholic Church, let me stumble along as well as I can
and offer a few observations from someone on the outside looking in. And the
ladies are welcome to correct the deficiencies they will no doubt find rather
quickly.
First, we should note how the
Church has liturgically juxtaposed today’s memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows to
immediately follow yesterday’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. That
closeness in time – two days separated by a second at midnight – indicates the
closeness of the suffering of Jesus on the transept of the Cross, and of his
Mother Mary’s suffering at the foot of the Cross. No mother’s heart could break
more than the sinless Mary’s heart in watching her Son die.
The gospel we read is one of two
options for today’s Mass. One option is John 19:25-27 depicting Mary’s
sorrowful station at the crucifixion, which we just heard. The second option
comes from Luke 2:33-35 when Jesus was 8 days old and Mary and Joseph take him
to the Temple to be circumcised, which by the way, was the first shedding of
Jesus’ Blood for our salvation.
And Simeon prophesies first in Luke
what John would later recount as being fulfilled in the gospel we just heard.
In other words, what Mary experienced in giving birth to Jesus and what she
endured watching her Son die are mysteries that we men can only mutter
meaninglessly about, unless the Holy Spirit inspires us, which is exactly the
case with St. Luke and St. John.
The closest I have come to witness
a mother grieve her son’s loss was when my nephew Noah died on February 3,
2017, over 8 years ago. Every year on February 3, I go to Fayetteville to
celebrate Mass for Noah at my brother and sister-in-law’s home with their 3
surviving children, Isaac, Sophia, and Isabella.
As each year goes by the pain of
Noah’s loss becomes a little more numb for me as time dulls the edge of it. But
not for my sister-in-law, Susan. She feels the sharp edge of that knife cutting
as deeply today as she did when she heard that fateful news on February 3,
2017. The old adage, “time heals all wounds” must have been coined by a
muttering man.
Time does not heal the pain of the
loss of a child in his mother’s heart. If anything, time only drives the knife
deeper into her heart as she notes every year the life her son did not get to
live. New sorrows lash against her heart, as this year on October 1 Noah would
have turned 28 and Susan’s heart hurts for another year her son did not get to
see.
My last observation comes from the
movie “The Passion of the Christ” by Mel Gibson. Perhaps no scene was as
memorable for me as the scourging at the pillar as we witness the full array of
the tortures the Roman army could contrive unleashed on Jesus’ innocent flesh.
I remember trying to be strong for Jesus and not cry as the whips tore into our
Lord’s Body and the captain of the guard counted the lashes in perfect
classical Latin.
At one point the camera panned away
from Jesus to scan the crowd of onlookers. And finally it rested to capture the
look of agony on the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At that point the tears
breached the flood gates and I sobbed like a baby needing to be held by his
mother’s arms. I knew I was beholding a great mystery: not only the salvific
suffering of Jesus but also how Mary shared in that suffering as only a woman
and a mother could.
And if all mothers suffer to
witness the death of their child, no mother endured as great a pain as Mary,
whose heart was immaculate and whose body was inviolate. And perhaps that
awareness is the only consolation for a mother who loses a child: one Mother
has suffered even more than all other mothers. But then again, all this is just
the meaningless muttering of a man, who looks at a mother’s heart from the
outside.
Praised be Jesus
Christ!
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