“Woman, behold thy Son … and to the disciple, behold thy mother”
The seven last words of Christ on the Cross begin and end with the address of the Son to the Father in the Peruvian Jesuit Fr. Bedoya’s ordering of the words. Everything is gathered into the life of God as Trinity. This, too, is the point of emphasis in the Gospel readings for the third, fourth and fifth Sundays after Easter, all taken from the 16th chapter of John’s Gospel with the repeated refrain, “because I go to the Father,” on the one hand, and the explicit teaching of the Son about the Spirit as the bond of truth and love, on the other hand. In every way we are being opened out to the reality of essential life which is the triumph of love over sin and death.
This is profoundly transformative not in the sense of becoming other than who we are but in discovering the truth of our humanity and our world as grounded in the essential life of God. The resurrection stories show us how we are transformed from sorrow and suffering into joy and gladness. Today’s gospel provides us with a wonderful maternal image of that change. “A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.” The analogy is made explicit. “You now therefore have sorrow” Jesus says to the disciples in anticipation of his Passion, “but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” It is joy known in the face of a world of suffering not in flight from it.
What does this mean for us? A new way of thinking that is the birth of new life in us. There is the possibility as the American writer and theologian Marilynne Robinson beautifully puts it, of “acknowledging the miraculous privilege of existence as conscious beings,” and thus a way of engaging the world not only in terms of the power and authority of kings and governors but most profoundly in honouring everybody as 1st Peter 2 tells us. The teaching is transformative and transcends the limited agendas of human rights and identity claims which privilege some at the expense of others and divide more than they unite. Instead we discover a way of seeing ourselves and one another in the embrace of divine love, the love which changes everything. Love gives of itself and is never exhausted.
The third word from the Cross is particularly poignant. Mary the mother of Jesus stands, as many a painting pictures her, at the foot of the Cross upon which Christ hangs. She is the mother of sorrows par excellence just as Simeon had said, “yea, and a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also” and all so that “the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” And as in such paintings, John, the beloved disciple, too, is at the foot of the Cross. They look upon the crucified, the one whom we have pierced, as John puts it, quoting Zechariah. “They shall look upon him whom they pierced.”
But in this word, Jesus looks upon us, upon our sorrowing humanity, and gives us to one another in his love for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. The co-inherence or mutual indwelling of God with God in God, the life of the Trinity, and the co-inherence or mutual indwelling of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ now extends to the forms of our co-inherence, our mutual indwelling with one another in the life of the Church as the body of Christ. We behold his love in each other in this powerful exchange of love. “Woman, behold thy son,” Jesus says to Mary in reference to himself and to John. To John, he says, “behold thy mother.” As John himself puts it, “and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” That hour. The hour of Christ’s Passion and Mary’s Sorrow belongs to the hour of new life in the beginnings of the transformation of sorrow into joy. Such is Resurrection.
“Mine hour has not yet come,” Jesus had said to Mary at the miracle of the wedding feast of Cana of Galilee. “Whatever he says unto you, do it,” Mary had then said to the servants and to us. Water is transformed into wine. For what end? Our joy and gladness in fellowship and love, a fellowship and love which is the radical meaning of our care and compassion towards one another. That love and fellowship is nothing less than the fellowship and love of the Trinity. This is the point of the analogy that Jesus makes to the disciples about the dialectic of sorrow and joy. “You shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice” in the vanity of its illusions. “You shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” The transformation is imaged precisely in terms of childbirth even as it points us to the greater and infinitely perfect love of God upon which all love depends. We are opened out to the greater joy that belongs to divine love, a joy “no man taketh from you.”
This, too, is the meaning of “the fellowship of Christ’s religion,” to our bond with God in our bond with one another. The “miraculous privilege of existence as conscious beings” frees us to God and to one another.
“Woman, behold thy Son … and to the disciple, behold thy mother”
Fr. David Curry
Easter 3, 2023