The Blessed Virgin Mary is all too often pictured as an impassive observer at the Cross. At best, she is pictured with a face of quiet suffering. Only a statue such as Michaelangelo’s Pieta catches something of her all too human suffering. But, it might be worth asking how the Church Fathers pictured the Theotokos’ reaction to the death of her son. Well, one can find what the opinion was during the time of the early Byzantine Empire by looking at some of the Oiki and the Aposticha of The Canon of the Orthros of Holy Friday. What do some of they say about Our Lady?
Having beheld her Lamb led to slaughter, Mary, the ewe, followed him in the company of other women, troubled, and crying thus, “Where goest thou, my Son? And why hastenest thou to finish this course? Is there, perchance, another wedding in Cana to which thou hastenest now to change water for them into wine? Shall I go with thee, or shall I rather tarry? Give me word, O Word, nor pass me in silence, O thou who didst keep me undefiled; for thou art still my Son and my God. . . .”
Today the blameless Virgin hath seen thee, O Word, suspended on the Cross . . . . She sighed disconsolately from the depth of her soul; she pulled her hair and cheeks bitterly; she smote her breast, crying with copious tear. Woe is me, O my divine Son! Woe is me, O Light of the world! Now hast thou disappeared before mine eyes, O Lamb of God. . . .
O Christ, God of all creation and its Maker, she who without seed gave thee birth, seeing thee suspended on a Tree, cried bitterly, “Whither hath the beauty of thy countenance disappeared, O my Son? I cannot endure the sight of thine unjust Crucifixion. . . .”
Does this sound like an impassive Mary, stoically bearing her suffering by the Cross? No, it does not! Rather, what is pictured here is a very Middle Eastern / North African mother. Her first reaction is one of unbelief. Notice that the poetic verses picture her as asking where He is going, as though He were simply going on another of his trips. Maybe she is not seeing right. She cannot believe her eyes. She has gone into a psychological denial of what she is seeing. Maybe this is just another of his unexpected miracles about to happen. Certainly, my Son could not be about to die in front of my eyes!
From there she goes on to a typical Middle Eastern / North African reaction. Certainly you have seen it on the TV. She is pulling her hair; she smites her breast; she cries out in loud cries. Have you not seen that when tragedies or funerals from the Middle East are shown on TV? There is no impassivity here. This is a woman openly weeping and beating her chest. This is pain openly expressed before the Cross. And, the final paragraph pictures her as crying out, on the edge of a breakdown. She says she cannot endure.
It is no wonder that the Gospel of Saint John pictures Him as looking down on his mother, and, at that moment, asking Saint John to take care of her. He sees her pain and one of His final acts is to try to make sure that in the midst of her emotional pain that someone is taking care of her. No, this is not an impassive and stoic Mary. This is a Middle Eastern Mary, in full pain and full of humanity, a Mary who has been pushed to the edge of her psychological endurance. And, yet, this is a Mary who did endure, a Mary who went on to be present at Pentecost and who sees and feels the presence of her Son in herself, in the Apostles, and in the other Disciples through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, the One who is make the presence of Jesus present in our lives.
This is the Mary that is pictured in Holy Tradition at the Cross. Certainly, she is not the impassive Mary of much of later art. She is a truly human yet sublime Mother of God. But, she is clearly a part of Middle Eastern culture and expresses her suffering openly in the way that was common in that culture. More than that, she is pictured as coming to the edge of her sanity and yet enduring. When our test comes, may we all be able to endure to the bitterest bottom of the cup.
we so often view the Scriptural narrative as if sterile. Thanks, Ernesto, for making it real.
St Mary having a breakdown sure makes a lot more sense than the usual picture of her standing there piously intoning Praises to God and generally being Holy. Wonder if she ever recovered completely or whether St John had to care for her long-term…
All the Holy Tradition shows her as being strong after the Resurrection, just like the Apostles. What is true is that she disappears from the Bible, and even Holy Tradition does not show her as being involved in missions or evangelism. It is as though she finally was able to rest. Depending on her age at Jesus’ birth, all the Apostles would have considered her to be an “older” lady, even though she would have been in her late 40’s at the time of the Resurrection. Remember that life expectancies would have been shorter than the modern ones.
But, since in the Book of Acts she is pictured as being present at Pentecost, she was not exactly “retired.”
Fr. Ernesto, take a look at this Avignon Pieta by Oswaldo Guayasamin, considered the “Ecuadorian Picasso”.
http://lancasterteam.com/vacation/ecu2009/guayasamin.html
Scroll down. Guayasamin’s work is at lower left, and to the right is the original by Quarton. I think Guayasamin painted a deader Jesus (which is the point) and a more anguished Mary.
I was at the Guayasamin museum in Quito in February and although I have no training in art I was fascinated by the amount of emotion he was able to pull out of a few lines and forms. Not just a T-shirt icon artist–even though his more grotesque stuff is all over Ecuador in knock-offs.
Have a wonderful Easter. He is risen indeed.
I have watched my daughter grieve over the loss of a child to a miscarriage. I have watched at the bedside of a seriously ill child. I have sat with friends who buried a child. Just the thought of the death of one of my children–all grown and on their own–almost stops my heart. Of course, I am not the Theotokos nor are my children the Son of God–but there is something about carrying a child under your heart for nine months, feeding that child with the milk of your own body, nurturing and raising that child that leaves you keening at their death. Mary was a normal, human woman and I cannot see her blithely standing by all peaceful, meek and mild while her dear child was tortured to death. Screaming, keening, crying–yes–heart broken–I can see that. I grieved with her yesterday–one mother crying with another down through time.
You are forgetting that virgin Mary used to live with the apostle John.So, she probably was active. Remember ( John this is your mother.Mother this is your son).
Of course Mary grieved for a long time,but she had to continue the teaching of her son.She believed Him and that is enough to give more strength to follow and crying for the terrible death of her son