Images of Mary in Holy Week are usually drawn from Good Friday. The greatest, the Pieta of Michelangelo, pierces the heart of any parent. Mary looks so young . . . and since she might have been scarcely forty-nine . . . she is very young to see her adult son crucified.
Mary looks at her Son held in her strong arms. He is dead and cold from the cross, strangely at rest and heavy in her arms.
It is not the stone that is cold, the great artist has made it warm and alive in her face, but the dead body that weighs her arms down. That body is colder than marble . . . it is death in the arms of a life-giving mother. It is so . . . sad (can we use the word dolorous anymore?) that it mostly has defied the irony applied to so many other of Michelangelo’s iconic works. There is a David in jeans and many uses of God’s hand reaching out to Adam’s in commercial advertisements, but such pain as is Mary’s does not sell product.
Mary is often pictured holding Jesus . . . as a baby or after the Cross. When He needed her, she was there . . . but by Holy Saturday He will not be held by her again.
And that always makes me wonder what Mary was doing on Holy Monday, before it was obvious to most of His friends that this Week was not going to end as well as Palm Sunday might have suggested. Palm Sunday was a triumph! Holy Monday had an assertive Jesus cleaning up messes in the Temple and preaching openly at last! The disciples must have been thrilled, but I imagine that Mary was more cautious.
It was in that very place that the aged Simeon had told her, holding the baby Jesus, that a sword would pierce her heart.
“So far so good,” she must have thought, “but if the good words of Simeon about her Boy looked to be coming true, then the other words?” The other words must come true as well. What could disturb the calm of the woman who could say to God, “Let it be done unto me . . . ” more than the foolish and wicked rejection of a man she knew to be God’s son? She knew His goodness. She knew Him and was there to see Him triumph, but she must have known humankind well enough to suspect that she was also there to see Him die.
Call no Mother, even this blessed mother, happy until she comes to the end of her life or she sees the holy end of her children’s life!
Mothers ache for their children to do well. A mother and a son grow up together . . . especially first born children . . . and any mother wishes everyone to get how really special her boy is. Some mothers rejoice in the success of her son only to see it harden him and turn him from the cheerful young man she raised to a hard and angry man she cannot respect. The happiness of a mother must always be tentative. The world is a hard and cold place and her son is so fragile!
If she knows and cares for his soul (and what good mother does not?), then it is even harder for a mother. Even at the moments of his success, she is on guard for her son. The fear that he might fall as he takes his first steps is nothing compared to the worry that his successes might cost him his soul. “Better he dies, than that!” she thinks, but prays it may not go so far. A mother can never rest until she sees her son’s future safe . .. and Holy Week reminds us that the very moment of triumph can turn ugly quickly.
Mary on Holy Monday looked at the cruel world and knew a sword was coming closer to her heart.
Today many an American mother will hold her son. She will gaze at him tenderly and with pride . . . a few (but too many!) will hold their son for the last time. Some will celebrate a birthday this week and others will agonize over a death that came too soon . . . and death always comes too soon to the ones we love. College graduations come this month where many adult mothers (still young and beautiful!) watch their sons achieve and are proud of their young men . . . but worry like the Virgin that a sword will still pierce their heart.
Yet there is peace on the figure of Michelangelo’s Mary.
Why? Does she know Easter is coming? Better she realizes that her Son is safe at last. The world has judged Him, done its worst, but the have only sent His soul winging on the first step of His homeward journey. They have sent Him to His Father. She must know that. She has seen Him triumph and pass the last and greatest test. She knows her boy is safe.
This Holy Monday mothers can only feel happy if they know their sons are in stronger arms . . . the arms of a Heavenly Father. I know there are mother’s reading this whose sons are prodigal. Like Saint Monica for Augustine when he was walking far from faith, do not lose faith. Your son can still come Home. Keep praying as she did. Pray him back to church. Pray him to true wisdom. My mother had to do so for me. My grandmother prayed for a son until he was elderly and watched him die before she gained the hope of his redemption and rest.
Can all the mothers, with sons not so promising as Mary’s, ever find peace? Is there rest for the heart ache?
Only in the promise of God . . . for the angels sang to Mary as they do to every mother in her heart when her son is born. She had the promise of God for her baby and not just the promise of pain. It is that promise of hope, of life beyond death, of a good Heavenly Father who will receive any prodigal however late that most comfort her. All the lesser Marys, and the Josephs too, are in the hard school of parenting where swords do pierce hearts (even our lesser hearts!), but we can cry out to God to hear his promise! They are children of the New Covenant! We have dedicated their little lives to God!
It is here that any mother can be like Mary. No mother must say to God at the start, “Let it be done unto me” as Mary did about the conception of Her son. Every mother can be Mary in the life of her son. The world is so hard and sin so sinful that she can only trust her boy to God with a “Let it be done unto me according to your will.” If God cannot save her son, what is a mother to do? Where is she to find rest?
Every Christian parent can trust the God of Easter to hold their children . . . beyond death . . . beyond pain to paradise.