Encountering Mercy in Suffering with Our Lady of Sorrows
Christ desires an exchange of glances with us like He had with His mother on the road to Calvary
The Passion of the Christ movie presents a heart-wrenching enactment of the fourth station of the Via Crucis, when Christ meets His mother. Were the two not the Son of God and the Mother of God, would not the son be begging for help, struggling to escape, and the mother weeping and trying to save him? Without faith, the scene might appear inhuman, a grim resignation hardening both their Hearts. Yet, when we recognize the great love that existed between them, the greatest love that ever existed between God and a human soul, the scene shifts.
Christ knew all He had to endure and where it would lead. We know Our Lady had some grasp of His mission, more so than others, but she certainly did not understand it all or see it clearly. Otherwise, why would she be praised for her faith (Lk 1:45)? She knew God was good, that her Son would fulfill His purpose, even if by all appearances He seemed to have utterly failed in His ministry. That faith did not make His Via Dolorosa any less her own Via Dolorosa. “And a sword will pierce through your own soul,” Simeon said. (Lk 2:35) I don’t think I contradict any theology to speculate that even if those words had rung in her soul for thirty-three years, she did not fully comprehend the force of anguish that would strike her during her Son’s Passion until it arrived. So in a way more fully than any human ever would, she shared in the pain of Christ.
The one who loved Our Lord the most suffered the most. That brings to mind St. Teresa of Avila’s words, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!”
But lest we take Mary’s title as Our Lady of Sorrows as cause for fear of what sufferings God will send us in our own lives, let us return to the fourth station of the Via Crucis and the look between mother and Son.
As much as Our Lord knew the pain He would endure in His passion, He must have known the pain His followers would endure by watching it. The disciples who fled, Peter’s denial and tears—and who can tell how much John the Beloved suffered, watching the piercing of the Heart upon which he had lovingly reposed the night before? Surely Christ could not have failed to take thought for His own mother’s pain, which would surpass the others’ because of the union of their Hearts.
He knew what He asked of her in watching her only Son suffer and die. As much as she entered into His sorrow, He was within hers. The look they exchanged must have been the look of greatest love, of union of wills, of her trusting Him as Lord, and He trusting her to stay with Him, believing in His mercy and power. It was a moment of tenderness, consolation, and strengthening.
Would He not desire to give us the same look in our suffering?
We may protest that our sin and imperfection excludes us from sharing such a moment of love and intimacy with Christ. We do not endure our suffering with the same sinlessness as Our Lady. Our sufferings often incite us to sin. We often sketch our own ideas of what Christ’s countenance must be like as we suffer. You can do better. Get over yourself. This is nothing compared to what I endured. Try harder!
Does our sin make us objects of harassment from the God of mercy in our weakest moments? In St. Therese’s logic (which is ultimately the logic of the Gospel), our very wretchedness gives us a greater claim to mercy, for it is precisely for the wretched and sinful that Christ came. Misericorida. As Fr. Jean in I Believe in Love says, it means: a heart which gives itself to the miserable.
Perhaps it is fairer to say that the look of compassion on Christ’s face increases the more miserable we find ourselves in our suffering. That is not to say that all He has for us is pity with no firmness, no encouragement, or no call for repentance. He loves us in truth, not mere sentimentality.
Yet, let us be open to the possibility that He desires in our suffering to have an exchange of glances with us like He did with His mother on the road to Calvary. A moment where He looks upon us with love, and enters into our pain as One who has “borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows,” (Is 53:4) as indeed He became Man to do. As One who knows precisely what is being asked of us in our particular cross, and invites us to trust in His grace to carry us through, to believe in His goodness that will use all our pain for His glory and ours.
Then, with the gentle prompting of our Mother, we may meet His eyes with our own look, full of all the anguish we are experiencing, but also full of utter trust in Him as our Lord. Already, the dawn of Resurrection creeps in when Love pierces pain.