Mary Upon Calvary

Ave Maria! This morning I've been reading and reflecting upon a portion of Rev. Frederick Faber's book, At the Foot of the Cross, which I excerpt below. Speaking of Mary, the Mother of Christ, Fr. Faber ponders the absolute rightness of her presence upon Calvary.

Mary, "the minister of the Incarnation," Fr. Faber insists, belongs on Calvary as much as she does at Bethlehem. The wood of the cradle has become the wood of the cross.  The Mother who laid her Divine Child in the crib now receives her Crucified Son from the gallows. Her Son! Her Beloved Jesus! The babe she bore in her womb with love beyond all telling!  Now it's a different sort of birth, but a birth it is, and she will lovingly suffer its pangs until rejoicing comes with the dawn.  "She had given Him His Precious Blood," Fr. Faber says, and "she must minister at the shedding of it." Yes, even unto the end, when, holding her Son's dead body in her lap, she bears Him up to the Father and becomes the throne of mercy for us and for the whole world.

"In a merely human point of view, we might be surprised at Mary's presence upon Calvary. It was not the fitting place for a mother, the scaffold of her Son; and her Son we might have expected would have spared her the agony. But she was the minister of the Incarnation... [and she]represented in herself the human obedience under which the Incarnate Word had lived, and which was...to characterize His death as perfectly as it had modelled His life.

"From the first, Jesus and Mary had never been separated. It seems to have been a sort of law of the Incarnation that they should be together. Her Assumption, Coronation, and Mediatorial Throne would be but the final instances of the operation of this law. No, that God has let us see the Thirty-Three Years in their perfection as a whole, we perceive that the absence of Mary from Calvary would have offended our Christian instincts as much as her absence from Bethlehem or Nazareth. She was the minister of the Incarnation: it all lies in that.

"She had no more right to come down from Calvary than a priest would have to leave the altar in the midst of the Sacrifice of the Mass. There would have been an incongruity in it. ...she had given Him His Precious Blood... {and}she must minister at the shedding of it. She must swathe the Man as she had swathed the Child. She must lay Him in the tomb who had already laid Him in the manger. She must preside at the end as she had presided at the beginning. There must be an overshadowing of the Holy Ghost at the last, as there had been one at the first... Her priesthood consisted in this continuity of ministry to Him. Her Maternity was not to Him a mere means, occasion, instrument, or access, but an enduring ministry under which His obedience was consummated. Mary's Maternity was her Compassion at Bethlehem; Mary's Compassion was her Maternity at Calvary."

~from At the Foot of the Cross by Rev. Frederick Faber

Mary, Mother of Christ!  Joyful Mother, Sorrowful Mother, Compassionate Mother, Faithful Mother, Minister of the Incarnation!  With you, may I always be giving birth to your Beloved Son, Jesus, for the life of the world.  Amen.