Mary's Participation in the Cross

This week's installment in my Friday series during Lent on the Christian meaning of suffering and the Cross.

As I’ve posted the last several Fridays, I’m publishing a weekly series of reflections at Catholic Exchange during Lent. This week I take up the theme of the difficulty of watching a loved one suffer without being able to prevent it, as Mary did when she stood at the foot of the Cross. Here’s a brief excerpt with a link to the entire article:

Mary left everything behind when she traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. She had no home there, no idea how this child would be born, or what would later happen to a child conceived of the Holy Spirit. She knew the Old Testament prophecies, but not precisely what her role would be, or what her life, St. Joseph’s life, and this baby’s life would entail. She placed everything—her hopes and her fears, her faith and her trust, her lack of knowledge or possessions or even a clear plan—entirely in God’s hands. She ventured out into the deep, risking everything, with her response, “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38). Never has there been another creature who gave herself so fully and without reserve to the One she loved.

When she presented Jesus in the Temple and heard Simeon’s prophesy—that her Son would be a sign of contradiction and a sword would pierce her own soul—she accepted this future suffering without knowing what it would involve or how it would happen. When she then had to flee to Egypt with little but the clothes on her back, to live as a sojourner in a foreign land, she embraced this hardship to protect Our Lord, without knowing how they would survive or when they could return home. Twelve years later when the child Jesus was lost, Our Lady and St. Joseph worried in great distress about what had happened to Him, as any parent would: she didn’t have a crystal ball telling her to wait three days and then go and find Him in the Temple.

Later, when her Son was grown, she stood fast, without outrage or complaint, as Jesus endured a farcical trial and unjust sentencing. She witnessed His unspeakably brutal scourging, saw His sacred head crowned with thorns, watched Him carry the Cross, and ultimately, stood by Him as He was crucified. When she stood weeping at the foot of the Cross, and later held His lifeless and battered body, she did not know that in three days He would rise from the dead. She endured all this in faith, trusting in God’s plan without fully comprehending it.

Click here to read the rest of the article. The previous articles of the series can be found here. Next week, on Good Friday, I will publish the final article in the series along with the prayer of Consecration to the Most Holy Cross of Jesus.

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