Mary, the mother who hears the word on the cross

The contemplative listening of Mary under the cross: Jn 19,25-27, the sword of Simeon (Lk 2,35) and Marian co-participation in the passion

The gracious passage of faith in Jerusalem is full of mysteries. Jerusalem is the city of faith par excellence: it is a holy city because it symbolizes divine election and the covenant, two experiences lived in the conjunction of grace and faith. The faith of Jerusalem is in its city: it has the same name (Daughter of Zion), plays the same roles: that of wife and that of mother.On the hills of Golgotha in Jerusalem, Jesus completes his Via Sacra and Mary her pilgrimage of faith: “This alone, in fact, is her task: to go from Nazareth to Golgotha.” The Virgin, under the Cross, keeps silent all the existence of the Son: she silences in the Gospel of Luke at the moment of his birth and in the Gospel of John at the moment of his death.

Mary and Contemplative Silence

In the heart of the Hour, Mary does not cry out, in chorus with the others: “Why did you do this to us?” (Mt 27,42). Faith believed even without the Son descending from the Cross, going beyond the phenomenology of martyrdom that covered the prophecy about kingship made to her on the day of the Annunciation (cf. Lk 1,32).Maria no longer asks 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. She, as a deep disciple of the Son Master, has now learned that the Son must first take care of the affairs of the Father (cf. Lk 2,49). Mary, making a theological choice, besides being humanly wise, remains silent and her silence “consists lovingly in the immolation of the victim she engenders,” as affirmed by a text from Vatican II.In the public life of Jesus, His mother appears in a very marked way right from the beginning, when, at the wedding feast of Cana, moved by compassion, she led Jesus the Messiah to begin His miracles. During the preaching of Her Son, She welcomed the words with which He, placing the kingdom above all relationships of kinship, proclaimed blessed all those who hear the word of God and put it into practice (cf. Mk 3:35 and par. Lk 11:27-28). Something that she faithfully did (cf. Lk 2:19 and 51). Thus advanced the Virgin along the path of faith, maintaining faithful union with Her Son until the cross. Beside this She stood, not without the design of God (cf. Jn 19:25), suffering acutely with Her only Son, and associating Herself with a mother’s heart to His sacrifice, consenting with love to the immolation of the victim who had been 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).

Under the Cross: All-Encompassing Listening

Mary under the Cross did not remain silent only in silence: She was silent by listening. The Gospels do not attribute to Her any words, but a total listening. By activating the effective and splendid non-verbal language of listening, Mary teaches not only virtue, but existential criteria and the laws of salvation history.

Seven Lessons of Listening:

1. Courage: One does not flee from the last enemy (1 Cor 15:26). 2. Fidelity: No man is abandoned, much less a son, at the terminal moment. 3. Faith: One does not withdraw from the limit situation of death because it is not the end of everything. 4. Consistency: By denying the encounter with death, one denies the meaning of life and what has been accomplished in terms of liberation and promotion. 5. Seriousness: Under the Cross Mary does not discuss but trusts in silencing the experience of witnessing the death of Her Son, with all that it means for Her. 6. Patience: Under the cross Mary does not complain and does not contest those who crucify the Son. 7. Paradox: In the heart of the Hour She accepts forgiveness as a principle of life.Mary appears, therefore, at the Cross as the beautiful lamb that stands beside the Lamb sacrificed. She who bore the Paschal victim and offered herself with Him. The silent lamb, beside the Lamb “who does not open His mouth” (Is 53:7).The silence of Mary is the imitation of the silent patience 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 He who was born of Mary, the pure lamb. Who was sacrificed at night and rose from the dead.

The Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross

Mary completed her experience as a disciple. She stood at the feet of the Master, who now ascended to the highest chair in the world, 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 under the Cross on that day nor afterward in the unfolding of the entire history of salvation, was welcomed with more openness of heart and understood with greater faith than Mary. As a mother in whose womb peace was formed—who is Christ (cf. Eph 2:14)—she participated in the event of the greatest forgiveness celebrated on the Cross. The Virgin Mother consented to the experience of the Crucified One’s forgiveness, only explicitly stated by the word addressed to the good thief (cf. Lk 23:43), for Christ on the Cross exercises the charity of forgiveness from a universal and eschatological perspective. Mary, maternally, allows this forgiveness to be celebrated with the objective language of silence.Forgiveness creates an interruption between the links of the logical chain of sin and its corresponding punishment, introducing, in the interval between them, the recreating and healing reality of mercy.Maria is, consenting and participating, in the place where forgiveness is celebrated as the law of the new creation that is born under the tree of the Cross. The event of the Forgiveness of the Cross involves the Lamb in her motherhood. Therefore, 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, to insert the principle of forgiveness into human history. She helps write the Word of forgiveness as the law of life in the heaven of salvation history. By participating in this transformation of history, Mary committed her virginal motherhood because she expressed the typical confidence of a mother in surrendering herself to the Son: she risked her entire life as Mother in the word and action of the Son, despite the contrary evidence manifested in the failure of the Cross.