Christ Before Herod
Duccio di Buoninsegna
1308-11
Tempera on wood, 50 x 57 cm
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena
Collect: Father, guide us, as you guide creation according to your law of love. May we love one another and come to perfection in the eternal life prepared for us. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Thursday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
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Mary, the Mother of God, is our spiritual Mother. The crucifixion was not only the sacrifice for sin, it was also the new birth of mankind to the spiritual life, lost by the sin of Adam. It was the great vital act that completed the work of God in the world. Mary had a share in that work; it was part of her life-work. The Nativity and the Crucifixion were as one action. The sacrifice of the cross began at Bethlehem. The new birth of mankind was completed on Calvary. She was concerned in both, and on each occasion she was present as Mother of the human race. — Excerpted from Our Lady's Feastdays, Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D.
I can imagine if you or I had seen Our Lady after the Crucifixion, we should have been astonished at her peace. I think she came down from Calvary consoling Mary Magdalene, and what we do know of her during those terrible days after the death of her Son seems to confirm that. We have just one scene. She is in the Upper Room. An ordinary mother could never have dared to face again that Upper Room where everything reminded her of Him, and of Him in His most poignant moments. Every memory would be a pain, no object of consolation would be there, but a well-spring of sorrow. She is there among a crowd (we are told the very numbers); there is no nursing of her grief away from everyone, but she stayed in the very midst of them all, as if she had to give them consolation. I feel sure many eyes were dried when she came swiftly into their midst. It was almost as if she had never had a Son. They were all her dear children, in the Upper Room. Was there ever a mother that might have been justified in hating mankind, and in brooding over her loss, as if she had a grievance against the world? Yet the one thing about her and her Son is they have no grievance against anyone. She had a memory charged, of course, with ten thousand sorrows and a heart now overloaded with ten thousand loves, but no grievance against the world.
Where did our dear Lady learn this perfect attitude towards suffering? — From her Son. It came of that grace that came to her in the moment of her soul's joy, the grace won for her by the death of her Son foreseen. She learned compassion from Him who had compassion on the multitude.
Excerpted from Stars of Comfort by Vincent McNabb, O.P.