The following is taken from the May 2012 Magnificat and is by Heather King:
"At the cross her station keeping/ Stood the mournful Mother weeping/ Close to Jesus at the last." Thus runs the thirteenth-century Latin hymn known as the Stabat Mater: "The mother was standing."
Still standing. Through giving birth in a stable: still standing. Through a prophecy that her heart would be pieced by a sword: still standing. Through watching from the foot of the cross as her Son was totured to death: still standing. In the three to fifteen years she purportedly lived after Christ died: still standing, still believing, still finding joy and meaning.
Mary, who probably couldn't read but who took care of the baby and cooked the meals, is our greatest saint. To be a mother is to stretch yourself as far as you can possibly go. It is to say, There! That is everything I have; that is my blood, my heart, my bone marrow. And it is then to be called to give in yet a different way, a different direction. Just when the mother wants to rest, she is called to more openness of heart, more self-emptying, more patience, more work, more letting go, more love....
Mary knew better than anyone, next to Christ himself, the suffering of the cross. For a mother to witness the brutal execution of an innocent Son- the fruit of her deepest procreative urge, the object of her most profound self-giving- is perhaps the most excruciating form of suffering a woman can endure. A mother would die for her child, Mary watched her child die for her.
"Mary was the Mother Incarnate and her sacrifice was quite simply the complete acceptance of that which happened to her Son, which meant the death of every shred of possessiveness," writes Dante scholar Helen M. Luke.
The death of possessiveness; the birth of God. "My soul doth magnify the Lord," Mary sang, heavy with child, as she journeyed to visit her cousin Elizabeth in "the hill country." What simplicity. What confidence. What humility. What purity-for in order to magnify God, you have to become transparent yourself.
We are all so afraid of falling through the cracks, of being forgotten, of aging, of dying. But if you don't want to be forgotten, we learn from Mary, value your soul more than success or riches or fame. Serve Christ instead of yourself. Become a model of creative suffering, patient endurance, and the erotic urge channeled, contained, and focused into a white-hot flame.
For purity endures. It is Mary who is venerated throughout the world, from the lowest places to the highest, not Cleopatra. It is Mary to whom we pray the rosary, not Marilyn Monroe. It is Mary we appeal to for help, for comfort, for solace, for understanding, not Salome.
Every follower of Christ spends a long "December"- maybe many Decembers - in a stable. But May means to burst, with Mary, ever Virgin, into our fullest, most fecund flower.--
