Woman, behold, your son!—Behold, your mother!
Bringing the Blessed Mother Into Your Home and Heart
Susanna spoke at a local parish last night on one of the Last Words of Christ. The following is the text of the talk.
I have been recovered from Lyme disease for six years, but I still avoid long grass. I cover myself and my children in bug spray whenever we are hiking. I worry about ticks when I am in my yard and gardening. And in some ways, I like winter more than warm and sunny summer, which has always been my favorite season. Because in winter there are no ticks. Yet, if I were given the option, I do not think I would wish away my year with Lyme disease nor the month I spent in throbbing pain in my bed—pain worse than childbirth. Sometimes the only relief in my pain was to pray the Stations of the Cross while laying on my side, uniting my own suffering to that of Christ’s and being comforted by His Sorrowful Mother. That was the year that I learned how to enter into Christ’s suffering body, to be with Him during His three hours of agony on the Cross, the agony we are brought into when we pray with His Last Words.
These three hours of suffering are a gift to us. One way they are gift is that Jesus’ suffering was for our sins so that we might have eternal life. Another way is so that we can know more fully the truth written in the Letter to the Hebrews that: “We have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Hebrews 4:15). He was tempted by suffering, both physical and spiritual. He knew that His own Mother suffered because of His suffering. But He also saw the pain and suffering of us all. And that is why He persevered.
Jesus has given us the gift of making our suffering His suffering and making His suffering our suffering. We know that because He suffered, we are not alone in our sufferings, in what we call our “crosses.” And in our suffering—when we are on our own cross or stand beneath the Cross of others—we find that we are not alone—for His Mother is always with us. She says to us, as she said to St. Juan Diego in her apparition in Guadalupe: “Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.”[i] She, who bore the full weight of the suffering of her Son in her heart, bears the weight of ours. She wants to be our Mother, to cover us in her mantle and be with us in all our needs.
Imaginative Prayer
The tradition of the Stations of the Cross invites us to pray with the suffering of Jesus and His Mother in a very intimate way. The way we bring to mind the scenes of Christ’s way of the Cross, is very similar to the form of prayer from St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises called Imaginative Prayer, where we enter prayerfully with our imaginations into the scenes of Scripture. When we pray this way, we can prayerfully imagine what might have been the interior states of the people in the scene, basing our prayer in the fullness of Scripture and Tradition. While it is not meant to be a literal relaying of what was actually thought and felt by the people in the scene, it can be useful to us a prayerful meditation on the spiritual sense of Scripture and especially what the Lord might be communicating to us personally.
We will be examining and praying with John 19:26-27:
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, 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 to his own home.
Before we try praying with these verses with imaginative prayer, we will look at the scriptural and theological tradition surrounding these verses. Pope Benedict XVI, in his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth, gives three levels of interpretation of Christ’s words to His Mother and to Saint John. First, he sees it as a literal relation of how Christ as a Son is providing for his widowed mother’s needs. Second, he talks about Christ’s use of the word “woman” and its scriptural implications. Thirdly, Pope Benedict applies these words to our lives as disciples of Christ. Each of these three interpretations, show us how the Blessed Mother is a gift to each of us individually and as a Church.
Adoption Arrangement
These last words of Christ, “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold, your mother” are first described by Pope Benedict in this way:
“This is one of Jesus’ final acts, an adoption arrangement, as it were. He is the only son of his mother, who will be left alone in the world after his death. He now assigns the beloved disciple to accompany her and, as it were, makes him her son in his place; from that time onward, John is responsible for her—he takes her to himself. [. . .] he took her into his own—received her into his inner life-setting.”[ii]
Benedict describes this act of Jesus, at first glance, as:
“an entirely human gesture on the part of the dying Savior. He does not leave his mother alone; he places her in the custody of the disciple who was especially close to him. And so a new home is also given to the disciple—a mother to care for him, a mother for him to look after.”[iii]
It is beautiful for us to see how Jesus concerned Himself with the practical details of the lives of those whom He loved. He knew the reality of being human, of needing food, shelter, and companionship, and He gave His Mother into the care of a disciple whom He loved dearly, who was not afraid to stay by His side even under the shame and humiliation of the Cross. St. John was loyal to the Blessed Mother even before she was given over into his care. And the Lord’s care for the particulars of their lives, shows us that He also cares for the particulars of our lives. He understands our difficulties and wants us to bring Him every single care, no matter how small.
And we must ask ourselves, have we joined the Apostle John in taking the Blessed Mother as our own, bringing her into our own homes and our “inner-life setting”? The more life throws my way, the more I have come to rely on her, especially in circumstances that I cannot control.
In my urgent needs, I often turn to the Memorare prayer of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Mother Teresa of Calcutta had a devotion to the Blessed Mother with this prayer, which she called a “flying novena.” When an urgent matter came up, for which she desperately needed help, she would “fly” unto the Blessed Mother, as the prayer goes, and would pray nine Memorares in petition and end with a tenth one in gratitude for whatever graces the Lord provided through our Lady’s intercession.
My first frequent use of the “flying novena” was when my son, who is now nine, was a teething infant. He cut about eight teeth over the course of four months, and during those months, would sleep in very short stretches. I used those long nights of nursing him in my rocking chair as a time to pray the rosary, but often by the end, my son was still awake and restless. It was then that I would turn to the flying novena of Memorares. And from what I can recall, he was almost always asleep by the end of it.
This memory of holding my son while praying to the Blessed Mother, brings me to the Foot of the Cross with her, standing below her suffering Son. My teething infant was also suffering, and I was suffering beneath him. “Behold, your son!” Christ speaks to me. “Behold, your mother!” Go to her in your need, bring her into your home and heart, entrust her with your cares. Her cares are My cares!
St. Maximillian Kolbe wrote that, “Mary is the one through whose intercession men reach Jesus and the one through whom Jesus reaches men.”[iv] We would do well to take her into our homes as Saint John did and to bring her our cares, whether it is through our rosary which we pray each day or the frequent use of the Memorare.
Woman as the “Church”
In addressing the next level of interpretation, Pope Benedict asks the question that many of us have asked while reading Scripture, why does Jesus use the word “Woman” when referring to His Mother? He does so with intentionality and means us to understand it in relation to the whole of Scripture.
Earlier in his Gospel, St. John gives us another instance of Jesus calling His Mother “Woman” at the Wedding at Cana. The Blessed Mother and Jesus are there with some of His disciples, when the she notices that the wine has run out. She walks over to her Son, and she speaks these words: “They have no wine” (John 2:3).
Jesus looks at His Mother, and we can imagine He does so with deep love and respect, and He replys, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4).
This “hour” of which He speaks is His coming Passion. Pope Benedict writes, “The two scenes are thus linked together. Cana had been an anticipation of the definitive marriage feast—of the new wine that the Lord wanted to bestow. What had then been merely a prophetic sign now became as a reality.”[v] On the Cross, the Hour has come, and Christ is the Bridegroom and His Bride is the Church, the “woman.”
Benedict writes further:
“The name ‘Woman’ points back [. . .] to the account of creation, when the Creator presents the woman to Adam. In response to this new creation, Adam says: ‘This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman . . .’ (Gen 2:23).”
Benedict says that “another stage of the evolution of this idea is found in the Letter to the Ephesians, where the saying about the man who leaves his father and mother to become one flesh with his wife is applied to Christ and the Church (cf. 5:31-32).”[vi]
There are so many layers to this marriage imagery, for each member of the Church participates in this role as bride of Christ.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), talks about human marriage as an image of God’s union with each soul: “[T]he bridal union with God is seen to be the original and true bridal state, while the corresponding human relationships appear as imperfect images of this original”[vii] When God created the first Man and Woman in the Garden of Eden, He created them to image the union that He would have with each soul. Jesus, in His pouring out of the Church from His side with Blood and Water, is the new Adam, and as Benedict writes, “[i]n the figure of Mary, Saint John shows us ‘the Woman’ who belongs now to this new Adam.”[viii] Mary is a symbol of the New Eve, who is the Church. We meet this symbol of the Woman again in the book of Revelation:
And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. (Revelation 12:1-2)
Benedict writes that this Woman of Revelation “is understood to represent all Israel, indeed, the whole Church” and that “the Church must continually give birth to Christ in pain.”[ix] Thus, our suffering with Christ and His Mother is a sharing in our mission as Church to bring Christ into the world.
Disciples at the Foot of the Cross
We are now ready to enter with imaginative prayer into the scene of Christ’s three hours of agony on the Cross. Let’s take a moment to place ourselves in prayer in that scene.
Jesus has been thrown down on the ground, nailed cruelly to the Cross, and lifted for all to see. We stand beside the Blessed Mother and St. John the Beloved Disciple. The noise of the crowd presses in. Other disciples stand with us, such as the Blessed Mother’s relative Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. Perhaps Simon of Cyrene has stayed, resting from his labor, not wishing to force his way through the crowd. The soldiers are also there, keeping the crowd at bay, looking on their handiwork. Longinus is among them, the centurion who will become a saint after piercing the Lord’s side with a spear. And with them, we witness a tender moment, one that Jesus means for us to witness.
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” (John 19:26)
There is a pause, a still moment, as if all that exists is holding its breath. All of creation, especially all that lives in sorrow, weakness, and pain, waits on the Mother. But the noise plays on in the background. Only the closest disciple pays attention in that moment, as the Mother watches her Son bring forth the Church in pain. Her pain, which tradition tells us that she did not have in physical childbirth, is present now. She is becoming the Mother of us all—through the agonizing death of her Son.
In this moment, she remembers the words of her Son, that day she came to speak to Him, when He was teaching the people, when He gave her the deepest compliment in saying, “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:50). She remembers the way He looked at her from across the crowd that day. She remembers her fiat at the Annunciation, her journey to Bethlehem, her flight to Egypt, her return home. She remembers her life with Saint Joseph and the child Jesus, and those three heart wrenching days of loss that ended with the finding of her Son in the temple. And she remembers losing Joseph followed by the three years of following her Son, as He did what He had come to do. The three years which began with a wedding at Cana, when He said to her, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4).
But as it always has, in her Immaculately Conceived existence, as St. Maximillian says, “Her will does not differ from the Will of God.”[x] She accepts her suffering for our sake. Her heart assents to being Mother of the Church. And as she assents, it is as if she turns to St. John, and wordlessly says what she told the servants at Cana, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). Only then, does Jesus turn His attention to Saint John, the disciple whom He loves:
Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:27)
The disciple, as Pope Benedict writes, “is both a historical figure and a type for discipleship as it will always exist and must always exist. It is to the disciple, a true disciple in loving communion with the Lord, that the Woman is entrusted: Mary—the Church.”
Living as True Disciples
Mary has already told us how to be true disciples of Jesus, we must do whatever He tells us. We must offer Him the water of our lives and let Him make it into the new wine of His grace. We must take His Mother into our homes and hearts, and offer her all of our needs, from worries for our families, to our daily concerns, to our financial worries, to our health crises, to our final perseverance at the hour of our deaths.
We are also called on to serve Christ as His Mother did, bearing fruit into the world through the gifts the Lord has given us. Pope Benedict writes:
“These words spoken by Jesus as he hung upon the Cross continue to be fulfilled in many concrete ways. They are constantly repeated to both mother and disciple, and each person is called to relive them in his own life, as the Lord has allotted. Again and again the disciple is asked to take Mary as an individual and as the Church into his own home and, thus carry out Jesus’ final instruction.”[xi]
There is a mysterious truth about being a disciple of Christ, in that our role and call is always changing. In one moment, we are carrying and serving for others, laying down our lives in service and love. We are the ones standing below the Cross, watching those whom we love suffer. And in the next moment we are the ones on the Cross.
I have witnessed this in the life of my mother. Three years ago, she was active and able, working full time as a nurse, assisting her elderly parents, organizing a prayer ministry, serving in her parish, and visiting her children and grandchildren throughout the Midwest. Then she noticed a loss of function in one of her hands, and after months of assessment and tests, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehring’s disease.
I have been witness to her slow decline as I visit her in St. Louis more and more frequently. Her comforting voice can no longer shape words, and she communicates by typing words on her phone. She is bent over a walker or seated in her power chair, and only rarely do I see her at her full, graceful height. My once strong and tall, elegantly featured mother, is losing all of her physical ability. “Everything is hard now,” she vocalized to me this week, forcing the words to take shape.
And I see her on the Cross beside our Lord, and He looks at her with love and me with love, and He tells me, “Behold, your mother.” His words have so many layers in them. He wants me to see my suffering mother, who is willingly embracing her cross of a rapid, cruel decline that will end in death. She is beautiful on her cross, offering her suffering for those whom she loves, offering her suffering with her God Whom she loves. Christ also points me to His Mother, my Blessed Mother. I need not worry that I will be orphaned, and left without a mother to guide and love me. The Blessed Mother hears and knows my needs. She is with me. And she stands beside me as we gaze upon the Cross and my mom becomes one with Christ, my mom who passes her faith onto me through the witness of her life.
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, 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 to his own home. (John 19:26-27)
Will we take her into our home? Will we do whatever He asks?
[i] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resource/55425/our-lady-of-guadalupe
[ii] Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2011), 220-221.
[iii] Benedict, Jesus, 220-221.
[iv] St. Maximillian Kolbe as quoted by Fr. Anselm Romb, OFM CONV, Total Consecration to Mary: Nine-day Preparation in the Spirit of St. Maximilian Kolbe (Libertyville, Illinois: Marytown Press, 2006), 15.
[v] Benedict, Jesus, 221.
[vi] Ibid, 222.
[vii] Saint Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, 183.
[viii] Benedict, Jesus, 222.
[ix] Ibid., 222.
[x] Kolbe, Total Consecration, 14.
[xi] Benedict, Jesus, 222.