Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Mother

"Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Mother"
by Gishlaine Howard for Liverpool Cathedral

The Mother. Mary meets her Son along the way of the Cross. His Cross becomes her Cross, his humiliation is her humiliation, the public scorn is on her shoulders. This is the way things are. So it must seem to the people around her, and this is how her own heart reacts: "And a sword will pierce through your soul also" (Luke 2:35). The words spoken when Jesus was forty days old are now fulfilled. They are now completely fulfilled. And so, pierced by that invisible sword, Mary sets out towards her Son's Calvary, her own Calvary. Christian devotion represents her with this sword penetrating her heart, in paintings and sculpture. Mother of sorrows!

"You who shared his suffering!", say the faithful, who know in their hearts that the mystery of this suffering can be expressed in no other way. Although this pain is hers, striking deep in her maternal heart, the full truth of this suffering can be expressed only in terms of a shared suffering -- 'com-passion'. That word is part of the mystery; it expresses in some way her unity with the suffering of her Son.

 

~Pope John Paul II, Good Friday, 2003

 

Behold the handmaid of the Lord.

Be it to me according to thy word.

~Luke 1:38

The Value of Our Daily Suffering

Jesus' sorrowful journey, the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross, is a precious reminder to us to recognize the value of our daily suffering: a lesson not to avoid it with opportunistic pretext or vain excuses; an impetus to make of it instead a gift to him who loved us, in the certainty that in this way we will build a new culture of love and cooperate in the divine work of salvation.

May Mary, who…followed Jesus on the way of the Cross, and whom we will find on Calvary, be for us a model in this gift of ourselves: may she help us to understand the value of our suffering and offer it to the Father joined with Christ's suffering.

~Pope John Paul II, March 5, 1989

Dear Mary, Mother of Sorrows, let me not waste whatever suffering will be mine this day. Show me how to unite it with your Son's suffering, as you did, for the life of the world. Amen.

Fourth Station, Jesus Meets His Mother Mary

Again tradition tells us of a meeting of mother and son on his way to execution. She was so much the center of the beginning of this redemptive mystery; she was with him for many of his preaching and healing adventures; she would stand beneath the cross at the end. Isn't it likely that the one who is the model of faith and solidarity would also take part in this last journey?

From the beginning, Mary shared the lot of her child, including his call to prophecy, his rejection and sufferings. She loved what he loved - the place where the proud are overthrown in the conceit of their hearts, where the hungry are fed and the rich sent away empty, where the meek and the lowly live with dignity while the powerful are dethroned. She was pierced by the sword of truth so that the hearts of many might be revealed. In her solidarity with Jesus who suffered the dispassionate gaze of strangers, she images all who stand in solidarity with those whose pain is public. She stands with the women who have illegitimate children, the ones who contract AIDS, the men and women marginalized because of their sexuality. And she stands with all who befriend them.

We stand together and commit ourselves to compassion, to openness and to accepting suffering in our lives rather than inflicting it. We pray to be faithful to the word of kindness and courtesy, to forgiveness and silent mutual love. We pray to have the courage to offer our support to those who struggle to live.

St. Stephen the Witness Student Center, Cedar Falls, IA

Fourth Station, Adrienne von Speyr

Father, you entrusted your Son to me by your Spirit. And as I have given him back to you daily and hourly, I give him back to you now once more, knowing that his suffering is nothing other than the expression of your grace, the expression of your love.

It is hard to understand. I do not understand it at all. And yet I know that I must give precisely this, that you require it in this way. And I ask you: Take your son out of my hands -- for he is my Son -- and take at one and the same time everything I myself have given him and which in this farewell hour bears only the name of pain and grief. Take it, dispose of it, let my suffering become as heavy as you will, I know (your Son has taught me this) that this is how I must pray in this hour.

Mary on the Way of the Cross,
Prayer to the Father
by Adrienne von Speyr
in With God and With Men

Here Our Lady plainly states that she does not understand…but she knows. She knows, she says, because Her Son has taught her. Her Son! Jesus, whom as a little child she taught to pray -- the Word, who learned from her lips verses from the Sacred Scriptures, especially those so dear to her heart -- the young man, who increased in wisdom and favor with God and man while living a humble life in Nazareth and being obedient to Mary and Joseph. This Son, her one and only Son, who took flesh in her womb when she uttered "Be it done unto me" has taught his mother to surrender everything with him in his prayer of total abandonment, "Father, Into your hands." Mary's suffering is heavy indeed as she meets her beloved Son climbing the mount of lovers. Her suffering will become even heavier as she kneels at the foot of His cross, utterly bereft as she receives the body of her dead child. She does not understand...but she knows...

Virgin of all virgins best,

Listen to my fond request

Let me share thy grief divine.

Fourth Station, by Hubert Von Zeller

Mary, teach me at this station the true meaning of compassion. Show me what lies beyond the emotion of human pity, and lead me to that supernatural view of natural suffering which invites my active and Godward co-operation. Let me come out from the shelter of my life, and meet the miseries of thy Son's mystical body in the spirit with which you went out to meet your Son. Mary, pray for me that I may see in those who suffer -- whether physically or morally, innocently or deservedly -- the presence of Christ whose pains you willingly chose to share.

Hubert Van Zeller in The Way of the Cross

Fourth Station, by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Jesus Meets His Mother

"Mary, our Virgin Mother, on the way to Calvary, you met Jesus carrying his cross. His face showed anguish, and his limbs were weak with pain. He did not complain, and his eyes were full of love. You met him and you understood. With him you climbed the hill of sacrifice, and you shared in his suffering for our salvation. Teach us, Virgin Mother, to recognize your Son in the oppressed, the outcast and the despised. Show us to walk by his side until his face shines with hope and, in the light of the cross, his agony is changed into joy." ~from The Way of the Cross by Hans Urs von Balthasar*

She met him and she understood. How often when I meet others in their suffering I do not understand. Sometimes I am too self-absorbed to understand. I am caught up in my own little world with my own little sufferings, and there's no room in my heart for anyone else and her sufferings. Other times I do not understand because I am preoccupied with resisting. I don't want to see this person suffering as she is and so I fail to understand that this is her God-given way of carrying the Cross with our Lord. Jesus is inviting her to share His suffering through this particular cross, but I want her to have another cross, a less heavy one. Help me, dear Mary, to let go of all that prevents me from understanding. Pray for me, Mother of Sorrows, that your crucified Son may never be a stumbling-block or foolishness for me but rather the power and wisdom of God. Amen! (cf. 1 Cor 1:22-25)

*Every Good Friday, the Holy Father walks the fourteen stations of the Cross around the Colosseum in Rome. These meditations were written by Hans Urs von Balthasar and used by Pope John Paul II on Good Friday 1988. Meditations from previous years can be viewed at the Vatican Web site.