There were only a few people who stood by Jesus in His final moments. How appropriate and how beautiful that one of them was His mother. This is what a real mother does: she sacrifices, she endures, she suffers, she loves.
I think all mothers (and fathers) can relate to this to a certain degree, some more closely than others. Many mothers have experienced the incomprehensible torment of watching their
In 1497, a cardinal named Jean de Billheres commissioned Michelangelo to create a work of sculpture to go into a side chapel at Old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The resulting work – the Pieta
children die slowly in a hospital bed, or quickly after a car accident or some sudden tragedy. Many mothers have suffered the agony of miscarriages, losing children they never had the chance to know or name. Most have felt, if not the pain of losing a child through death, still the pain of losing their children to the inevitable passage of time.
If the unthinkable happens and the child dies, she will feel as though he has carried her whole being with him into the grave. That is what it means to love someone the way a mother loves a child. It means giving them your entire self, suffering as they suffer, and going as they go.
All of this is perfectly exemplified by the story of Jesus and Mary. Modern society tells girls to look to pop stars and businesswomen for inspiration. They ought to look here instead. To the foot of the Cross. To pain and beauty and redemption and love. To a mother and her son.
