GOOD FRIDAY: THE WOMAN ON THE HILL

                                               The Woman on the Hill     

                                                                                                          

                Our lives are to sparkle and dance and lure others into the arms of God. Mary’s faith life is a dance to imitate, but the steps are ours to learn, and no dance is the same. What is more important is to grow up, walk on our own two feet, and run after the Spirit’s gifts. A mother’s love stretches us and makes us imitate the love we have been given so graciously. Mother Mary saw that “the Child grew in stature and strength.”

Mary is the Virgin daughter of Israel who bears a Son, who says “Yes” to the God who calls her to carry God’s own Son and birth him in our world. She the lowly handmaid who will be called “Blessed” by succeeding generations, she has the Faith. Her will is to do “the command of the eternal God (Rom 16, 26), even if it means walking the hard road from Nazareth of Galilee to the place of the Skull outside Jerusalem. She saw her Son heading for disaster, but by faith and steadfast loyalty she walked by his side. From the “maid of Nazareth” she will become the “woman on the hill.” And we, men and women of faith, will walk with her from Bethlehem to Calvary. We shall stand and contemplate this magnificent woman on the hill, the woman of faith who replied to the angel Gabriel: “Be it done unto me according to your word.” Rest your eyes upon this brave Mother standing by her crucified Son.

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.                      

The woman of the hill has become the woman of our hearts. As the Beloved disciple John took Mary into his own, we too take her home and give her pride of place, even though we humbly admit that our home is not always in order.