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He said to His
mother: "Woman,
behold your Son." Then, He said to the beloved disciple, John:
"Behold your Mother."
It was the Apostle John who gave us a one-word name for God: "Love."
And it was the Holy
Spirit who filled the sorrowful Mary "with immense
love, widening and deepening her heart, as it were, so that she might
accept as a last testament from the lips of her Son her maternal mission
with regard to John, the beloved disciple: a mission which prefigured her
spiritual motherhood toward humankind as a whole."
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Mary, Our Mother
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Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee;
Blessed are thou among
women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus crucified.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
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"It is not Jesus alone, but
all the disciples (Peter, John, the Magdalene), who call Mary,
"Mother." On Calvary, Mary receives from Jesus her
designation as universal Mother.
As Jesus, who is affixed to the
cross, is being raised up from the ground, Mary, whose hands
clutched the rocky ground as her sons’ hands were nailed to the
cross, rises from her kneeling position in proportion to her
son’s being raised on the cross. She then stands upright as her
son is now upright on the gibbet.
After some time, Mary approaches
the cross with John, the beloved disciple. She kisses Jesus’
bloodied foot, and pleads for permission to die with him at this
climactic moment of redemption: "Flesh of my flesh, Heart of
my heart, my Son. Let me die with you!" Jesus responds to his
mother and to John: "Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your
mother." As the fruit of her sufferings with Jesus, Mary
becomes the spiritual mother of all beloved disciples, and of all
humanity redeemed at Calvary.
In The Passion of the Christ,
Gibson has accomplished a Marian feat no pastor or theologian
could achieve in the same way. He has given the world through its
most popular visual medium a portrayal of a real human mother,
whose heart is inseparably united to her son’s heart. This
mother’s heart is pierced to its very depths as she spiritually
shares in the brutal immolation of her innocent son. Hers is an
immaculate heart which silently endures and offers this suffering
with her son for the same heavenly purpose: to buy back the human
race from sin." ~ Mark
Miravalle
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