Mary Standing Where Love Remains

The same arms that cradled Him at the beginning held Him again at the end.
Image credit: Michelangelo’s Pietà, photo via Wikipedia.

Last week, on Holy Thursday, my family and I followed a small group of parish friends from church to church for what people often call the Seven Churches. It is an old Holy Thursday practice, moving from one parish to another to pray before the place of repose and keep watch with the Lord.

At each stop, Jesus had been moved. Not gone, just reposed somewhere quieter and a little off to the side. In one parish He was in a side chapel. In another, in an older part of the church that felt almost tucked away. One church was chanting the Tenebrae in Latin, and the incense hung heavy in the air. In one place, we had to cross the street from the church to a parish center. At every stop we knelt, prayed, read a reflection, and moved on to the next church.

The whole night felt heavy in a peaceful way. The altar is stripped. The main tabernacle is empty, the Sanctuary Lamp is extinguished, and the Lord is not where you expect Him to be. Everything feels a little unsettled.

And talking about something that was unsettled, all night, at each church, the thought of Mary kept entering my mind as I prayed before the place of repose.

It was not loud at first. Just a quiet nudge. A passing thought that kept returning. While we moved from church to church, following the Lord through those places of prayer, I kept thinking of His mother. I kept thinking of what those hours must have been like for her, not just at the foot of the cross, but through the whole terrible stretch that led there.

Then at the last church, something clicked.

It started with a sound, that small suckling noise a baby makes while feeding. Then I noticed it. A mother was quietly breastfeeding her child before the tabernacle. No one made a scene. It seemed natural. It was just a mother feeding her baby in church. Tender. Hidden. Ordinary. But the moment I saw it, something opened up in me. All the thoughts that had been circling quietly through the night suddenly came together.

It was something about Mary. No, it was always about Mary.

We often move quickly from Palm Sunday to Calvary. We know the story so well that we can forget how human it was. Jesus was arrested. Taken away. Moved from place to place. Watched. Mocked. Struck. Spit upon. Crowned with thorns. Burdened with the cross. Crucified. And Mary, His mother, had to live through all of that.

There were likely long stretches of her life where she could not be near Him for one reason or another. Long stretches where she could not hold Him, shield Him, feed Him, or even touch Him. She had once lived with Him, raised Him, watched Him sleep, watched Him laugh, heard His voice in the ordinary rhythm of home. Now men dragged Him from place to place, and all she could do was follow as best she could and suffer what no mother should ever have to suffer.

That thought hurt because of what came before it.

Gabriel had once stood before her and said, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High… and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:31-33)

That is how the story opened. Not with nails. Not with blood. Not with jeers from a crowd. It opened with promise. It opened with a young woman saying yes.

Mary gave her yes as the handmaid of the Lord, but her yes cost more than she could have known in that moment. She gave God her body, her future, her ordinary life. Then she gave Jesus the hidden years too, the years that do not get as much attention. She held Him. Fed Him. Watched over Him. Carried Him when He was small. Comforted Him. Loved Him in all the daily ways a mother does.

That is why that quiet moment of a mother worshiping her Lord while feeding her child in church would not let go of me. The Son of the Most High once depended on His mother for milk, warmth, and rest. The King whose kingdom would have no end once slept in her arms.

Simeon had already told her this would not be easy. “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted, and you yourself a sword will pierce.” (Luke 2:34-35) A prophecy is one thing when it hangs in the air over your future. It is another thing when that blade finally reaches your heart.

John’s Gospel gives us one of the shortest and strongest pictures of Mary on that day: “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother…” (John 19:25)

Standing.

She was standing there. Not because she was untouched. Not because she was calm. Not because she understood every part of what God was doing. She stood because love remained. She stood because mothers do not stop being mothers when suffering enters the room. She stood because even when she could not change what was happening, she refused to leave Him alone.

As I sat there that night, my mind even drifted for a moment to Judas, maybe because I had reflected on him not long ago. The pain that drove him into despair was real. The darkness was real. But there is no comparison to what Mary felt watching the crucifixion. And yet there was one thing Mary had that Judas could not seem to hold onto in his darkest hour.

She knew the promise.

She knew what Gabriel had said. She knew who her Son was. She knew that even if she did not understand the path, God had spoken over this child before He was even born. Her pain was deeper than I can fully imagine, but beneath that pain was a promise she had carried for years. She knew the story was not ending in defeat, even if on Good Friday everything looked lost.

That does not lessen her grief. If anything, it makes her fidelity even more beautiful. She did not skip over sorrow because she had faith. She walked through sorrow with faith still alive.

I think that is one reason the Pietà has always moved me so deeply. It feels like two photographs laid over one another, a mother holding her baby, and the sorrowful mother holding Him again after death. The arms do not change much. The weight changes everything. The child Gabriel announced to her was still the same Son. The boy she once carried was still the same Jesus. The lifeless body laid across her lap was still the same Lord whose kingdom would have no end.

Good Friday did not cancel Gabriel’s promise. It carried that promise through a darkness no one could have imagined on the day of the Annunciation.

And maybe that is part of why reflecting on Mary matters so much in the Rosary. She does not pull us away from Jesus. She keeps us near Him. She knows what it is to adore Him as a child, to follow Him as a disciple, and to suffer beside Him as a mother. She knows what it is to treasure mysteries without fully understanding them. She knows what it is to stay when staying hurts. She knows what it is to believe that God is still telling the truth, even when the whole world looks dark.

That is why Mary was on my mind that night moving from church to church. At each stop, Jesus had been taken somewhere else. We kept going to find Him. We kept kneeling wherever He had been placed. And with every move, my heart kept going back to Mary, because she once lived a far more painful version of that search.

She did not move from parish to parish. She moved through the Passion. She followed her Son through the worst night and day the world has ever seen.

By the time I got home and into bed, I could not stop thinking about that mother with her child before the tabernacle. That image had become two images in my heart. One was present and ordinary, a mother feeding her baby in the quiet of a church. The other was ancient and sorrowful, Mary standing there, remembering the Son she had once held close, now given over for the life of the world.

Sometimes Holy Week lays one mystery over another until you start seeing what was there all along.

So maybe when you pray the Sorrowful Mysteries, pause for a moment and look beside Jesus, not only at Him. Look at the mother who stayed. Look at the woman who once said yes, once cradled Him, once fed Him, and then stood there as the sword finally pierced her heart.

There is something holy in remembering that the same arms that held Him in love at the beginning held Him again in grief at the end.

And maybe that is one more way the Lord teaches us what love really is.