SORROWFUL MOTHER

“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.