by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla
But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his
mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!"
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!"
Then he said to the disciple,
"Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to
his own home. (John 19:25-27)
And a sword will pierce through your own soul also. (Luke 2:35)
She stood there and looked.
She thought that she knew and understood what was the day of her
fulfillment. She remembered that night,
Joseph anxious that there was no room at any inn, her own knowledge that the
time had come to give birth to her Son, not the best time, in the small city of
Bethlehem crowded with people responding to the census directive from the
Emperor. But she felt what was happening
deep in her body and she knew that the time had come that was the time of
fulfillment, fulfilling what the angel had told her just nine months ago. She remembered the birth, the absence of pain
and instead a rush of joy. She remembered the smell of the animals, Joseph
arranging clean straw in the manger, the baby’s cry, how she held him in the
cold of the night. All this came welling
out of her memory as she stood there transfixed, transfixed by her act of
seeing her Son dying on a cross. She
could not take her eyes off him for one second, and she knew now so deeply that
it was not the birth that was her fulfillment.
It was standing here at the foot of the Cross that was the fulfillment
of her destiny, the fulfillment of her God given role announced to her by the
angel. She was not alone, for her Son’s
beloved disciple stood with her, when all the others had fled. But he seemed to be looking down, as if he
could not bear to see the One he loved dying this painful and shameful death.
She stood there as a mulier
fortis, a woman in the line of Sarah and Rebekah and Deborah and Esther and
Judith and the mother of the Maccabees.
She stood there and allowed her heart to be pierced, remembering that
evening in the Temple when Simeon said to her:
A sword shall pierce your soul.
And so she stood there and it felt as if her heart were being pierced by
a sharp sword, the same sword that pierced the side and heart of her Son. And in that moment she understood what she
was born for, what she had lived for, as her
Immaculate Heart wracked with pain and sorrow was joined to the Sacred
Heart of her Son, as blood and water
poured out from his side: the joining of the love of man to the love of God.
People often ask why this feast is celebrated in white
vestments and not black or even violet.
It is because of the joy that Mary experienced at that moment at the
foot of the Cross that broke her heart.
There seems to be a paradox in what I just said, but that apparent
paradox is shattered by the incomprehensible love of God in Jesus Christ. That is why this feast is celebrated in joy
after the joy of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This joy cannot be understood outside of the
Church of believers. The world will
never understand this joy whose depth is in suffering. But more and more, so many Catholics cannot
comprehend this joy rooted in suffering that is in the end redemption, for
their religious sensibilities have been dulled by a half a century of bathing
in the tepid waters of sentimentality and intellectual vapidity, especially in
their experience of the worship of God in the Mass.
But there are signs that the laity may be willing to come
out of this tepid bath and are open to a cold shower that will brace them to
reawaken their faith in the virile Jesus Christ who is their champion and Lord
and to give them the courage to be men and women of strong and real faith that
understands the relationship between joy and suffering, a relationship of
love.
The events of the past several weeks have certainly caught
the attention of both the Catholic faithful and the secular media. There were those who thought and declared
that the clergy scandals brought forth at the turn of the last century were
over and done with and let’s move on.
That that was not the case and wishful thinking on the part of prelatial
clergy is now absolutely clear. The
terrible immorality of the clergy was not confined to a few whose infamous
deeds vis a vis sexual molestation of
children, mostly boys, were discovered 20 years ago. What is happening now is that the collapse of
the noxious smoke screen that protected these child molesters may be about to
happen. The smoke machine run by the
bishops and the Roman curia is about to be short-circuited. Or so we hope. I
wish I could say that the short circuit will be caused by the outraged
laity. But it does not seem so. The genuine piety of the laity towards the
Church is admirable and comes from their faith.
But some bishops have relied on this for many years to get on with the
status quo, not only with respect to covering up the terrible sexual scandals
of the priests involving sexual predation of little boys but also with respect
to the network within the Church that allows this covering up to happen.
It would seem obvious so far that the bishops cannot address
and solve the moral problems that beset their own brethren. There is too much moral compromise
already. When the chosen people of God
in the Old Testament strayed from their faith and allegiance to the one true
God and went hankering after the false gods of the people surrounding them, the
true God used the pagan peoples surrounding the Jews, the Amalekites, the
Hittites, the Jebusites, the Philistines, and ultimately the Babylonians who
carried off the chosen people into exile:
God used the pagans surrounding his people to not only punish them for
their abandonment of their God but also to try them in the fire to bring them
back to Him. The Amalekites and Jebusites
and Hittites and Philistines and King Nebuchadnezzar are long gone. But it may be that God will use the secular
powers of the government to chastise and purify his Church in our time. The Hittites today may very well be the Attorneys
General of the United States, many of whom are not Catholic, some of whom are
anti-Catholic. This gives us great pause and so it should, for the secular state because of its prejudices could do great harm to the Church. But what do Masses of Reparation and services
of repentance called for by bishops mean without moral accountability? Can the bishops think that such pious
gestures—and I do not in any way discount the reality and graces of these
Masses and prayers—can solve the deep and underlying problem of the moral
corruption in the clergy and hierarchy of the Church? No. It seems that those in the Church who can hold
these bishops accountable are unable and unwilling to do that job. There is a lack of virility grounded in truth
within the priests and bishops of the Church.
How do our clergy measure up to the virility of Saints Perpetua
and Felicity? Or the virility of Saint Birgitta? Or the virility of Saint Catherine of Siena? Or the virility of the countless wives
through the centuries who have with great sacrifice of themselves done what had
to be done to raise their children as Catholics often with little help from their
husbands? Or the ultimate virility of
the Blessed Virgin Mary who stood at the Cross and did not flinch and allowed
her heart to be pierced with the suffering of God? Men who are virile leaders
of their people stand with them and lead them as the spiritual head and father of their people, marching at the head and facing the same way as those they
are leading to the Lord. They do not face their people in the manner of Father
Feel Good who becomes the focus of the Mass and who forms a closed circle with his people and thereby evacuates the seriousness of the Mass itself, that seriousness
that is the Cross of Jesus Christ.
This feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, should fill us great joy as we celebrate this
Mass in the Traditional Roman Rite, as we all face that eternal East from
whence shall come Him who will judge the living and the dead and whose kingdom
will have no end. Maranatha . Come
quickly, Lord Jesus.
