An Adapted Excerpt from The Crucifixion

Mary had stood through at the foot of the Cross, the entire Three Hours, though She had had a sleepless night, and the morning had been crowded full with terrible happenings. In the strength of Her unfailing loyalty, She had stood through it all. Scripture is careful to note the posture, as if this miracle of endurance in itself revealed something of the greatness of the Mother’s heart. Almost as a reward for Her Dolor, it is now an impossible thing to preach Christ Crucified unless Mary is in sight. It is something else we preach, not that — unless She is standing there.

The Source of Her Sorrows

There is more to be said of this incredible sorrow. Above all else the Crucifixion has this peculiar feature: that it was the original fountain and source of all the other Dolors, except the Loss of the Christ Child for three days in Jerusalem. But the two Dolors which came out of the Infancy, and the four which represent the Passion, are centered in the Crucifixion. The sword of Simeon’s prophecy was the Crucifixion. The Flight into Egypt was to prevent the cruelty of Herod from destroying the Christ before the hour willed by His Father. The Meeting of the Son and the Mother was on the road to Calvary. The Taking Down from the Cross and the Burial were sorrows which flowed naturally out of the Crucifixion and were intimately united to it. The Crucifixion itself, then, was the realization of Her lifelong woe. The fountain was reached from which the others had sprung or were to spring. She had tracked it up the mountain of Calvary. What remained now was the Water and the Blood which flowed down from the mount and sank into the ground just at the entrance of the garden Tomb.

The Length of Her Anguish

Another special aspect of the Crucifixion is the length of time during which the intensity of Mary’s pain remained at a peak with no sign of relenting. The length of time the human body can withstand some of the most terrific tortures devised by cruel and perverse minds, rarely goes beyond a quarter of an hour. Pain pushed beyond a certain limit causes instantaneous death. In human punishments which are not meant to kill, there is a deliberate control over the amount of pain being caused; the victim is watched carefully that he may not be made to endure too much. But to Mary the Crucifixion was three hours, three long hours of mortal agony, filled with hundreds of types and shapes of torture, each one of them intolerable in itself, each one of them pushed beyond the limits of what a human could endure without a miracle keeping him alive. Each one of them kept at the highest possible level of intensity for the entire length of time. When pain comes, we wish to lie down, sometimes to run about or writhe or gesture wildly or groan. Mary stood. She stood upright on her feet the whole weary while. She leaned on no one. Not one audible sigh accompanied her silent tears. It is difficult to take this thought in. Nor by hearing it nor by reading about it will we be able to absorb it, but only by prayer.

An Heroic Test

The Crucifixion was an heroic test of Mary’s perfect faith.

The faith of pretty nearly the whole world was in Her when She stood with John and Magdalen at the foot of the Cross. There was hardly an ounce of Her belief which was not tried to the limits by the amazing scene before Her. In one way, Our Lord’s Divinity was never more hidden. But in another way, from a supernatural perspective, it was never so obvious. Was it really possible that God Himself, the Incarnate Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word Made Flesh, would have to endure such humiliations? Was the light within Him never to gleam out once? Was the Wisdom of the Father to be taunted with such blasphemy, led about so absurdly and with such undignified helplessness by the foolish guards of an immoral king? At how many points in the Passion were the limit of what was appropriate completely overstepped. Even in the Gospel accounts, simple as they are, there are so many things that the mind cannot dwell on without being shocked and repulsed, not to mention astonished! Though we live hundreds and hundreds of years after these events, they still test our faith by their awfulness; our blood still runs cold by their murderous filthiness; our devotion is still tempted to look away, sickened. We are tempted not to contemplate too deeply these deeds of disgraceful cruelty, by which He so lovingly and so publicly repaired the damage done by our own secret sins. To this day a man weakly devoted to the Passion can be judged to have only a weak, feeble faith, only a lukewarm, distracted love, only a spirit of penance that asks what can be gained for self more than what can be offered to Him.

Yet Mary was more delicate and more sensitive by far than we are — and She drank all these things in with Her eyes; She understood the horror of them in Her soul as we shall never understand it. Think what faith was Hers.

Providence Seemed Absent

Think also how strange it was that the Divine Perfections should have been so hidden, so utterly covered with obscurity throughout the Passion. Sin was triumphant. Justice was condemned. Holiness was abandoned even by the All-Holy One. Providence, that tender Fatherliness with which God cares for each of His creatures and most especially for His children, seemed to have withdrawn, as if forced to. God was stamped out, and creatures had creation to themselves. Nay, more than that, they had the Creator Himself in their power. Heaven did not step in and assert its rights, even when such an intervention appeared most needed and most natural. Oh, how the theology of angels was needed to reconcile the happenings of that day with the true powers of the Most High!

But then, the angels themselves might well be a test of Mary’s faith. Were there such things, such beings as angels? She had seen them so often, She could not doubt it. But where was their zeal for the Incarnate Word? Where were the double-edged cherubic swords that guarded the entrance into Eden from all but Enoch and Elias? Ah! They were there! Legions of them were pressing forward, yet ever beaten back, like a storm cloud striving to plow its way up against the wind. They were there, eager and burning, yet bending backwards with difficult obedience before the meek admonishing eye of Jesus.

Grace Resisted

Or, again, who could have believed during these hours that divine grace really had power to convert human hearts? None could see His inner beauty as Mary could, and only She could fathom the depth of His prayer. He was the very beauty of holiness. During His Passion men themselves had torn away every veil hanging about His sanctity. His humility, His sweetness, His patience, His modesty, all were revealed now with the fullest light upon them. Each was exercised openly and heroically in the midst of unthinkable insults. And yet men were not won to Him! There were the guards who had fallen backwards in the Garden the night before. There were those who had stood nearest to Him during the Scourging; those who had talked to Him as Pilate had; those who had taken Him to Herod and brought Him back again. There was the impenitent thief close by His side. Grace was going out from Him at every moment. His prayers for these souls were constant and unending. Mary, too, was busy interceding for them. Yet when the sun set on Friday, how very little fruit had grace born in all these hearts!

Never did anyone so walk by faith as Mary did that day. There was enough faith to save the whole world in Her single heart.

To be continued…