At the Foot of the Cross: Mary’s Sorrows and the Helplessness of Her Love

Part Two of an Adapted Excerpt from The Crucifixion

Mary became our Mother just when She lost Jesus. Since She had already had such a love of souls, and since that love had already been immensely increased by the events of that very day, to be solemnly appointed Mother of Sinners brought with it an enormous increase in grief. The multitudes of men that were then wandering over the wide earth like sheep without a shepherd, the ever-increasing multitudes of the centuries to come, all these She received into Her heart, seeing at the same time, the hardness of sin, the helpless misery of sinners, the power that was theirs to successfully resist God’s grace and Her own efforts to save them. She was given in that moment, also, the most profound appreciation of the horrors of their eternal exile amidst the darkness and flames of punishment.

Our Lord’s word, “Woman, behold thy son,” had caused to happen what it had commanded to be done. She beheld. And She became. This word made Her Mother of men not only by an outward official proclamation but in the reality of Her own heart. He opened up there new fountains of inexhaustible love. He caused Her to love men as He loved them, as nearly as Her heart could come to His. It was as if He hid Himself in the souls of sinners, millions and millions of times over, and gave Her enough love to embrace them all. And such love! It was so unshakable, so burning, so eloquent, so far above the natural love of an earthly mother in hopefulness, tenderness, and perseverance! And what was this new love but a new capacity for sorrow?

We cannot rightly understand Mary’s sorrow at the Crucifixion under any circumstances, simply because it is above us. But certain ideas which we may form we will miss altogether if we do not bear in mind this truth: Mary became our Mother at the Foot of the Cross, not merely by Christ declaring it so, but by His making it so. His words effected an interior transformation in Her heart. He enlarged it, broken though it was, and fitted it with new and powerful affections for the souls that now belonged to Her. Do we not see how She also received in that moment an immeasurable increase of Her pains? She was given love for those who had no love for Her. She was given the mission to save those who did not wish to be saved.

Ah, Mother! It was truly the pains of labor you felt in giving us birth! The bitterness of Eve’s curse was the very atmosphere surrounding your spotless soul in that hour of our spiritual nativity.

The Helplessness of Her Love

We must not fail to count among the peculiarities of this Dolor that of Mary’s being unable to reach Jesus in order to fulfill those works of mercy which it was Her mother’s right to fulfill. Though the taking Down of Her Son’s Body from the Cross is soon to bring upon Her new worlds of sorrow, still, not being able to have Him close is now equally unbearable. They have mourned little, too little for their own good, who do not understand this contradiction.

It is hard for a mother to keep herself quiet by the deathbed of her son. Grief must be doing something. Whatever the sufferer needs, the mourner counts it a blessing to give. The pillows must be smoothed again, the hair gently brushed away from the eyes, those drops of the sweat of death wiped from the feverish brow, those bloodless lips perpetually moistened, the white hand held and stroked, that curtain pulled back to give more air, the weak eyes shielded from the light, the bed-clothes pressed out of the way of his difficult breathing.

Even when it is plain that the softest touch, the very gentlest of these dear services, is a fresh pain to the sufferer, the mother’s hand can scarcely restrain itself. Her heart is in every finger. To sit still is to be overwhelmed with emptiness. She hears the nurse give directions and thinks it is not her skill or experience that makes her say them, but her hard-heartedness, because she is not that beautiful boy’s mother. Therefore she rebels in her heart against the nurse’s authority, even if the chances of being cruel do in fact hold back her attempts at kindness. Surely that trickle must be dabbed from the mouth; surely that lock of hair must not be permitted to remain across his eye, dividing his sight; surely that icy hand should have the blood gently, most gently massaged into it again. She forgets that the eye is glazed and sees nothing now, that the blood has gone to the heart and even a mother’s hand cannot summon it back again. And so she sits in an agony of inaction. She can do nothing — and it is death to her.

Think what Mary suffered those three long hours beneath the Cross!

Was there ever a deathbed so comfortless as that rough-hewn wood? Was there ever a posture more torturous than to hang down by nails in the hands, the weight of the Body pulling down more with each passing minute? Where was the pillow for His Head? If it tried to rest itself against the Title on the Cross, the Crown of Thorns drove it forward again; if it sank down towards His Breast, it could not quite reach it, and its weight pulled the Body against the nails. Slow streams of Blood trickled from wounds all over His beaten Body, making Him tremble under their touch with the most painful excitement and uneasiness. His Eyes were clotted with Blood, liquid or half-congealed. His Mouth, quivering with thirst, was also caked with Blood. Every Limb called out for the Mother’s tender hand, and it would not have had to reach far. There were multitudes of pains which Her touch would have soothed.

Oh, mothers! Have you any name for that intolerable longing which Mary had to smooth that Hair, to cleanse those Eyes, to moisten those dear Lips which had just been speaking such beautiful words, to pillow that blessed Head upon Her arm, to ease those throbbing Hands, and hold up for awhile the soles of those torn, crushed Feet? It was denied Her. She could but stand there, motionless as a statue — not a statue unfeeling, insensitive, numb with shock; rather She stood in an attitude of reverent adoring misery. Hers was the only fitting posture of a broken-hearted creature who felt the very arms of the Eternal Father round Her, holding Her up to live, to love, to suffer, and to remain still.

Christ Abandoned — And Mary Lives On

We must also remember that the Abandonment of Jesus by His Father was something to Her which it cannot be to us.

The words of Jesus on this occasion imply a religious mystery. As is the case with all such mysteries, the words expressing it mean more to theologians than to uneducated Christians, more to the saints than to theologians, and more to the blessed in Heaven than to the saints on earth. But whatever the depth of our knowledge is, that should be the depth of our love, and in Heaven it is so. Thus, while the Abandonment of Jesus on the Cross fills our minds with a sacred horror, we only understand it in a confused, clouded way. We can tell it is a mystery, but we cannot fathom in what the mystery consists.

It is often the very indistinctness of divine things that allows us to endure them. Who could live if he truly realized what hell is, and that at every moment immortal souls are entering there, entering upon their eternity of the most shocking and repulsive punishment? We smell a sweet flower, and just then a soul has been condemned. We watch with trembling love as the priest elevates the Host and the Chalice, and meanwhile the gates of that fiery dungeon have closed upon many souls. We lie down up on the grass and look up at the white clouds, and all the while hell is underneath that grass, within the measurable diameter of the earth, full of human souls, its roaring flames and countless sounds of terror and despair muffled by the soil that covers the crust of the earth. What an agony this would be for us, if our minds truly comprehended it!

So it was with the Abandonment of our Blessed Lord. None understood it as Mary did. The whole of its marvelous theology was perhaps clear to Her; at least She saw in it what no one else, not even an angel, could see. Hence while it stirred up in Her a variety of the most vivid emotions and the most tender affections, it also plunged Her into fresh sorrow.

As a last unique part to this Dolor, we see Mary being unable to die with Her Son.

So often with those who have lost a loved one, the only possible consolation would seem to be that of dying with the dead. One heart has been the light of our life, bright in the blue sky of prosperity, brighter still in the black clouds of trial and adversity. Now that light has been put out. Our loved one is dead. Why should we survive? What meaning can life hold for us anymore? That pulseless heart was the goal of all our journeys. Every chance at contentedness ended there. We value no past where that heart was not. We see no future in which it does not play its part. All our plans have ended. All our expectations have been so long focused on that one point, and now it is gone. We are falling through, and we know not where. Ah! This loss is truly the end of life, more truly than mere physical separation of body and soul.

Surely we can all remember days which were the end of the world to us, days which seemed could not possibly have a morrow! There was a bed, the mattress sunk beneath the sad weight of a beautiful terror; it was to us the end of time, the edge of the world, the threshold of eternity. It had been long expected, and yet words could not tell how cruelly unexpected was the loss when it came at last. All our hopes and fears and loves were gathered up, as if the Judge were coming the settle them. Common things could not go on after that. Daily duties must not plague us. Habits were run out. It was an end, an end of so much — so much so cruelly ended. It was a fearful thing to have no possible chance of regaining happiness, and therefore we longed to lie down and die on the same bed and be buried in the same grave.

Such is the extreme boundary of human grief. Our Lady’s loss was something different. The end of the Thirty-Three Years was not like any other end. Her Son was God. This was the difference. Think now of the unutterable misery of the Mother’s life continuing when His was done. It cannot be explained. But we can feel it, in a region of the heart too deep for words; we can see it, in a realm of the mind too bright for thoughts — that actual separation of Jesus and Mary, the breaking of that union that had been the world’s divine mystery for all those wonderful years.

Which of us can tell what grief is like when it has gone beyond the point at which it would kill us, when we only live because of a miracle? Such was our Mother’s grief when Our Lord breathed out His Soul into His Father’s hands.