“STABAT MATER”
In pools of
tears swim a few tender memories:
his birth in
that cold, dark stable in Bethlehem. How she shivered as she held him for the
first time, so tiny and helpless.
The cross comes
into focus again. She looks up at her Son. He is naked; his forehead wrinkled
in agony. She cannot reach to soothe it or wet his salt dry lips.
Again her eyes
blur. Another memory floats: she remembers his first words...his first steps.
She remembers how he’d love to help her bake bread, dip it in honey and bring
it to her smiling lips. She remembers how it made her little boy chuckle and
his eyes sparkle.
She remembers
saying to herself, when he was twelve and already about his Father’s business,
“He’s not my little boy anymore.”
Rivulets of
blood beading the earth beneath the cross. . .
Deep down inside
she knew that her little boy was born to die.
Why should she
be there?
But this was
hers. This cross upon the hill. He had not sheltered her from pain nor ever
asked that she not be free to learn anguish. She had learned that.
He had not been
fretful or concerned to throw around her soft protection, guarding her against
a share in him. He’d spoken truth to her. He’d not been reticent or sparing.
He’d not held her unadmitted to the full acceptance, never.
She had heard
what Simeon could say, and at the moment when she’d found the Child that had
been lost, he had not consoled her with a gentle paraphrase of futures, eased
away from what the days should be. And he’d not softened any loneliness when
Nazareth was ended.
She was free to
sorrow and not withheld. She could be eager, insistent, insatiate, for this was
hers to take, her own. And by a long inclusion granted her, she’d known she’d
need not ever turn from grief
Of all the
spreading earth this was the one place she might stand with him.
She could be
near. He would not deny her now; he’d not forbid her come here.
This was hers,
her life, her dignity, her choice, the essence of her heart’s significance, the
sum and substance of her existence, the end of her being.
She bore the
right to be here, standing under the claim of being the “Woman.”
She could
penetrate to this, this small and inner-concentrated anguish.
She could stand
here. This was hers.
And he would
only look, expecting her.
“Woman, here is
your son.”
“Son, your mother.”
Love never
looked like this.
CROSS AND COSMOS
Just as a
loud explosion can precipitate an avalanche, so when the crucified Christ
“cried with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit” (Mathew 27,50), certain
cataclysmic phenomena occurred like so many echoes of his final cry. As the
body of the Crucified writhed “in extremis”, the earth trembled in earthquake
horror at what took place on Calvary: the Master of the universe was being
broken by his own creatures’ malice. Darkness enveloped the land, the Temple
curtain was torn in two, and the earth convulsed and regurgitated the dead who
walked the earth again in a zombie daze. Trembling nature got a slice of the
action that decided the fate of the world forever.
Wherever the
story of Golgotha has been told, the role of nature as partner in the drama
could not be left out, as if the mystery of divine suffering was conveyed
through the compassion of nature. And the pagan Roman centurion was drawn into
it by witnessing to the Crucified when, with numinous awe, he perceived in a
naïve-profound way that something more had happened than the death of a holy
and innocent man.
The sun veiled its face in shock horror at what it witnessed, and by
that token lost its own erstwhile divinity: it conceded all power to the One
who, in ultimate agony, surrendered to that which is greater than a million
suns. Thus, a suffering and struggling soul, which cannot be broken by all the
powers of the cosmos, is the true image of divinity. There is no more a
“Sun-god”, only a “brother Sun.”
“The curtain of the
Temple was ripped in two.” The Temple tore its gown, as
mourners do, to show its nakedness and shame for what its servants did by
rejecting an innocent worshipper from its precincts. Plucked asunder, the now
ragged weave lost its separating quality. He who was expelled for blaspheming
the Temple had cleft the curtain and exposed the Holy of Holies for every man
and women, for all time. From then on, every place became a god-unforsaken
place, in the name of the One who hung upon the Cross in the name of the holy
place.
Like the temple,
the earth was judged at Golgotha, judged to be unfit of itself to be the safe
ground for building our cities and religious systems. Trembling and gurgling,
the earth pointed to another foundation on which the earth itself rests, and
that was the self-surrendering love on which all earthly powers and values
concentrate their hostility but which they cannot conquer. Since the hour when
Jesus uttered his loud cry and breathed his last and the rocks were split, the
earth ceased to be the foundation on which we build on her. Only in so far as
it has a deeper root in which the very Cross is rooted can it last.
Finally, the
body of God was too sublime to be contained within earth’s bowels. The boulders
split, as the land quaked, in deference to the Lord’s passage from darkness to
light. No longer is the universe subjected to the law of death out of birth,
but to the law of life out of death by the One who passed from death to life,
from earth to heaven. From the moment that the Divine Son surrendered his
spirit to his Father, the universe has received another meaning. History has
been re-directed and draws us human into its sweep unto God who is all in all.
WOUNDED HEALERS
Even
after the Resurrection we prefer the keep the cross of the wounded Christ in
our churches, for we are a community of wounded and hurt people, needing the
Wounded Healer. The church as the re-presentation of Jesus has the mission of
walking in the midst of a world wracked with pain and obsessed with its own
self-destructiveness and sin. Having overcome death himself, Jesus knows better
than any of us that no human problem -
neither A.I.D.S., nor the bomb, nor the blighting of the environment - need
paralyse us. He assures us: “I AM the First and the Last and the One who
lives.”
EASTERING PAIN
To separate the cross
from the resurrection is to destroy the central mystery of our faith. The
experience of many generations has affirmed the affinity between our pain and
the pain of Jesus. Jesus does not always show us the way out of the
disappointments of life nor provide an explanation of their meaning. He does,
however, fill our suffering with his presence. Suffering which we refuse to
integrate into our lives works out negatively. This suffering can have many
faces: health problems, addictions, career setbacks, political changes,
humiliations and betrayals, our spiritual mediocrity, and a host of others. Our
disowned negative experiences can stifle our love, hollow our generosity, affect
our honesty, and trap us in petty self-absorption. The cross of Christ,
perceived in unity with the resurrection, offers great strength to take on the
inevitable and render it fruitful. Thus assumed into the Paschal Mystery, our
suffering is also our Eastering.
