There hasn’t been an Easter Season I can remember, that I didn’t grieve for Mary. Even when I was a little Catholic girl kneeling in church on Good Friday so many years ago. Long before I knew what it was like to be a mother. To know that inborn, maternal love that could surpass anything wordly. That feeling that you would freely give your own life, to save your child’s.
With swollen eyes she wept, huddled at the foot of the cross….looking through tear-stained fingers at her son’s lifeless body. The body she knew only too-well.
This lifeless corpse was once the baby she rocked in her arms. He was the toddler whose bloodied knees she had very tenderly bandaged.
He was her twelve-year-old boy who had disappeared for three days only to be found in the temple preaching to the elders.
She was living a nightmare that Friday long-ago….never dreaming that in three-days-time her Son, this bloodied lifeless body, would rise from the dead and save the world.
Mary is an inspiration to all mothers. She was part of the enormous sacrifice that Jesus had made for us. As His mother, she was with Him on His last journey. Her presence told her Child that she would never abandon Him. As she was with Him in the beginning, she would be with Him in the end. God had given His Son the gift of a beautiful mother, and she would ease His burden with her love until He took His last breath.
As mothers, we watch our children carry their own crosses. My children may stand alone with their cross, but like Mary, my love will always be there to help ease their burden.
And so, each Easter Season, my thoughts always turn to her mourning the loss of her beloved Son. I cannot imagine her grief as she watched Him die on that Friday so long ago.
