Gospel: John: 19: 25-27

 

Today, feast of Our Sorrowful Mother, the Gospel of the day presents the passage in which Mary, the Mother of Jesus and the Beloved Disciple, meet at Calvary before the Cross. 

 

The Mother of Jesus appears two times in the Gospel of John: at the beginning at the wedding feast in Cana, and at the end, at the foot of the Cross. These two episodes, only present in John’s Gospel, have a very profound value. 

 

The Gospel of John, besides describing the facts, reveals the symbolical dimension which exists in them. Thus, in both cases, at Cana and at the foot of the Cross, the Mother of Jesus represents symbolically the Old Testament waiting for the New Testament to arrive, and in the two cases, she contributes to the arrival of the New Testament. At Cana she perceives the limits of the Old Testament and takes the initiative. She tells “they have no wine!”. 

 

On Calvary, the mother is together with the Son, standing up, a strong woman. Hers is a silent presence which supports the Son in His gift of self unto death on a cross. The words of Jesus are significant: “Woman, this is your son.”… “this is your mother.” The Old and the New Testament must walk together. At the request of Jesus, the beloved disciple, the son, the New Testament, receives the mother in his house. In the house of the Beloved Disciple, in the Christian community, the full sense of the Old Testament is discovered. The New Testament, the new pact cannot be understood without the Old one, nor is the Old one complete without the New one.