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. 

 

While the soldiers were doing their cruel work, Jesus was thinking anxiously of His mother. 

 

Mary the mother of our Lord stood before the cross of her Son. None of the Evangelists has told this except John. The others have related how that at our Lord’s Passion the earth quaked, the heaven was overspread with darkness, the sun fled, the thief was taken into paradise after confession. 

 

John has told us, what the others have not, how that from the cross whereon He hung, He called to His mother. He thought it a greater thing to show Him victorious over punishment, fulfilling the offices of piety to His mother, than giving the kingdom of heaven and eternal life to the thief. For if it was religious to give life to the thief, a much richer work of piety it is for a son to honour his mother with such affection. 

 

Behold, He said, your son; behold your mother. Christ made His Testament from the cross and divided the offices of piety between the Mother and the disciples. 

 

Our Lord made not only a public, but also a domestic Testament. And this His Testament John sealed, a witness worthy of such a Testator. A good testament it was, not of money, but of eternal life, which was not written with ink, but with the spirit of the living God.

 

 Mary, as became the mother of our Lord, stood before the cross, when the Apostles fled, and with pitiful eyes beheld the wounds of her Son. For she looked not on the death of the Hostage, but on the salvation of the world; and perhaps knowing that her Son’s death would bring this salvation, she who had been the habitation of the King, thought that by her death she might add to that universal gift. But Jesus did not need any help for saving the world. He received indeed the affection of a parent, but He did not seek another’s help.