Mary, the Mother Who Listens to the Word at the Cross

In Jn 19:25-27, Mary stands beside the Cross, between the beloved disciple and the other women. Her presence is not passivity: ever since the prophecy of Simeon (Lk 2:35), she has been prepared for this moment. This article examines what it meant for Mary to listen to each of the Seven Last Words of Jesus, and the theological role of her contemplative silence on Calvary.

Mary’s contemplative listening beneath the cross: Jn 19:25-27, the sword of Simeon (Lk 2:35), and Marian co-participation in the Passion

Faith’s passage of grace in Jerusalem is full of mysterious meanings. Jerusalem is the city of faith par excellence: it is a holy city because it symbolizes divine election and the covenant, two experiences that are lived in the conjunction of grace and faith. The faith of Jerusalem is in her city: she bears the same name (Daughter of Zion) and repeats the same roles, that of bride and that of mother.

On the hills of Golgotha in Jerusalem, Jesus completes His Way of the Cross and Mary her pilgrimage of faith: “This alone, in fact, is her task: to go from Nazareth to Golgotha”. The Virgin, beneath the Cross, guards with her silence the whole existence of the Son: she is silent in the Gospel of Luke at the moment of His birth and in the Gospel of John at the moment of His death.

At the heart of the Hour, Mary does not cry out in chorus with the others: “He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him” (Mt 27:42). Faith believed even though the Son did not come down from the Cross, going beyond the phenomenology of martyrdom that veiled the prophecy about the kingship, made to her on the day of the Annunciation (cf. Lk 1:32).

Nor does Mary any longer ask Jesus: “Son, why have you done this to us”? (Lk 2:48), as she said when, after losing Him, she found Him in the temple, because, as a profound disciple of her Son and Master, she has now learned that the Son must first of all attend to the affairs of the Father (cf. Lk 2:49). Mary, making a theological choice that is also humanly wise, keeps silent, and her silence “consists lovingly in the immolation of the victim she brings forth”, as a text of Vatican II states.

“In the public life of Jesus, His mother appears in a clearly marked way at the very beginning, when, at the wedding at Cana, moved with compassion, she led Jesus the Messiah to begin His miracles. During the preaching of her Son, she received the words with which He, placing the kingdom above all ties of kinship, proclaimed blessed all who hear the word of God and put it into practice (cf. Mk 3:35 and par.; Lk 11:27-28). This she was faithfully doing (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). Thus the Virgin advanced along the way of faith, faithfully maintaining her union with her Son even to the cross. There she stood, not without a divine plan (cf. Jn 19:25), suffering grievously with her only Son, associating herself, with a mother’s heart, with His sacrifice, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of the victim born of her. Finally, Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, gave her as mother to the disciple with these words: woman, behold your son (cf. Jn 19:26-27)”, (Lumen gentium 58).

Beneath the Cross, Mary exercised an all-encompassing listening

Beneath the Cross, Mary did not merely keep silent: she kept silent while listening. The Gospels attribute to her not a single word, but a total listening. By bringing into play the effective and splendid nonverbal language of listening, Mary teaches not only virtue but also the existential criteria and the laws of the history of salvation.

1) courage: one does not flee from the last enemy (1 Cor 15:26).

2) fidelity: no man is abandoned at the final moment, much less a son.

3) faith: one does not withdraw from the limit situation of death, because it is not the end of everything.

4) consistency: by refusing the encounter with death, one denies the meaning of life and what has been accomplished in terms of liberation and human advancement.

5) seriousness: beneath the Cross Mary does not argue, but trustingly keeps silent about the experience of witnessing the death of her Son, with all that this means for her.

6) patience: beneath the cross Mary does not complain, nor does she protest against those who crucify the Son.

7) the paradox: at the heart of the Hour she accepts forgiveness as a principle of life.

Mary therefore appears beneath the Cross as the fair ewe standing beside the slain Lamb. She it is who brought forth the paschal victim and offered herself with Him. The silent lamb, beside the Lamb who does not open his mouth (cf. Is 53:7).

Mary’s silence is the imitation of the silence of the suffering and dying Christ. The law became the Word, the commandment grace, the figure reality, the lamb the Son. This is the voiceless lamb. This is the one who was born of Mary, the pure lamb. Who was sacrificed in the evening and rose from the dead.

The seven words of Jesus on the cross and Mary’s listening: from the entrusting of the beloved disciple (Jn 19:26-27) to the “Consumatum est” (Jn 19:30)

Mary brought her experience as a disciple to its consummation. She was at the feet of the Master, who had now ascended the highest chair in the world, in order to listen to Him until His last breath. Thus she listened to His last seven words, with which He marked His messianic agony.

• First word: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). No one, neither beneath the Cross on that day nor afterward in the unfolding of the whole history of salvation, welcomed it with greater openness of heart or understood it with deeper insight of faith than Mary. As the mother in whose womb peace was formed, the peace that is Christ (cf. Eph 2:14), she took part in the event of the supreme forgiveness celebrated on the Cross. The Virgin Mother consented to the experience of the forgiveness of the Crucified One, made explicit only in the word addressed to the good thief (cf. Lk 23:43), for Christ on the Cross exercises the charity of forgiveness in a universal and eschatological perspective. Mary, as a mother, allows this forgiveness to be celebrated with the objective language of silence.

Forgiveness creates a break between the links of the logical chain of sin and its corresponding punishment, introducing, in the interval between the one and the other, the re-creating and healing reality of mercy.

Mary is present, consenting and participating, in the place where forgiveness is celebrated as the law of the new creation born beneath the tree of the Cross. On the rationally insoluble question of forgiveness, Mary offers no reasons but points to a place: she stands beneath the Cross, in the company of Christ, who on the Cross consecrates forgiveness as the law of the covenant sealed by His blood.

The movement of Mary’s pilgrimage of faith has become a constant as we discover her place in the history of Salvation. We discover and point out places, identify presences, observe companionships, and retrace the paths Mary traveled in her story as the messianic Mother.

The event of the Forgiveness of the Cross involves the Ewe in her motherhood. For this reason, forgiveness is a maternal reality. As we can see, Mary is a woman of forgiveness in a very strong and essential sense: she collaborates, in listening to the word, in inserting the principle of forgiveness into human history. She helps to write the Word of forgiveness as the law of life in the sky of the history of salvation. By taking part in this transformation of history, Mary committed her virginal motherhood, because she expressed the trust typical of a mother in entrusting herself to the Son: she staked her whole life as Mother on the word and the action of the Son, despite the contrary evidence displayed in the failure of the Cross.

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