SOCIETY OF MARY ANNUAL MASS

Saturday 15 May 2021

S. Clement’s, Philadelphia

John 19:25-27

Saint John’s description of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the Cross is wonderfully evocative. One of the blessings of hearing this Gospel today is that six weeks after Good Friday we return to the scene of Our Lord’s crucifixion, viewing it again from the new perspective of his Resurrection and Ascension.

Some biblical scholars argue that Our Lord’s words to his Mother and the Beloved Disciple amount to nothing more than a dying man’s last-minute disposition of family affairs, ensuring that his Mother will be provided for after he’s gone. And that’s indeed part of what’s taking place.

(Incidentally, this interpretation still supports the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, for if she and Joseph had had other male offspring after Our Lord’s birth, then this responsibility would have passed automatically to them, and no such provision would have been necessary.)

But as any serious student of the New Testament can attest, nothing is ever that simple in John’s Gospel. Beyond the level of literal meaning, Our Lord’s words frequently communicate profound and sublime truths at multiple levels of symbolic meaning. There’s no reason why this episode in particular should prove any exception to that general rule. And at the outset, I want to acknowledge my debt to the contemporary Catholic apologist Edward Sri in his 2018 book, Rethinking Mary in the New Testament, which I highly recommend. 

Sri points out that Our Lord’s words to his Mother and the Beloved Disciple follow a recurring pattern in Saint John’s Gospel. Character A sees Character B and makes a statement beginning with the word “Behold.” John the Baptist sees Jesus coming towards him, and declares, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Then, after seeing Nathanael under the fig tree, Jesus remarks, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” In both cases, the word “behold” introduces a statement revealing some theological or spiritual truth concerning the person being spoken about. 

Our Lord’s words from the Cross follow exactly this pattern. Seeing his Mother, and the Beloved Disciple standing by, Jesus says to his Mother, “Woman, behold thy son.” And to the disciple: “Behold thy mother.” The pattern of words signals us that the relationship being named and called into being has not only a practical but also a theological and spiritual meaning.

To tease out the content of this meaning, we need to look at two more words that John uses. First is Our Lord’s form of address to his Mother: “Woman.” In that cultural and linguistic context the term is not disrespectful as it might be in contemporary English, but it’s nonetheless highly unusual. The second is the word “hour,” in John’s comment, “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

Both words, “woman” and “hour,” have appeared together before, in John’s account of the miracle of water changed into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. There, Our Lord also addressed his mother as “Woman,” remarking enigmatically, “My hour has not yet come.” Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus has spoken repeatedly of his approaching “hour,” which the reader understands to be the hour when he will be lifted high on the Cross. So now, when John remarks that “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home,” we’re to understand that this hour he’s been speaking about all along now finally has come.

In this context, the form of address, “Woman,” clearly implies that Mary is the New Eve—Eve being of course the original Woman. The name Eve, we recall from Genesis 3:20, means “mother of all living.” We recall also that in Genesis 3:15, God tells the serpent who’s brought about humanity’s downfall, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head; and you shall bruise his heel.” On the Cross, then, the hour has finally come when the woman’s offspring defeats our ancient enemy, the devil.

That symbolism by itself would be rich enough. But there’s more. The words “woman” and “hour” occur together in yet another place in John’s Gospel. In his Farewell Discourse at the Last Supper, Our Lord tells a parable describing how his disciples will suffer when they see him betrayed, arrested, condemned, and crucified, but then will rejoice when they witness his Resurrection from the dead: “When a woman is in travail she has sorrow because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers her anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.”

At the foot of the Cross, Mary figuratively fulfills this image of the woman in travail and sorrow because the hour has come. Some patristic writers indeed describe Our Lord’s sufferings on the Cross and his Mother’s concomitant sorrows as a kind of birth pangs of a new creation. A key result is precisely her new maternal relationship with the Beloved Disciple into whose care Our Lord entrusts her.

That reflection brings us to the significance of the Beloved Disciple himself. Traditionally, he’s been identified with the Apostle John, and I see no reason to dispute that identification. But again, nothing is ever that simple in the Fourth Gospel! In addition to being a specific person, the disciple whom Jesus loves is also a representative figure, an ideal disciple, a model of discipleship. So, when Our Lord names the Beloved Disciple the son of Mary, and Mary Mother of the Beloved Disciple, the unavoidable implication is that he’s establishing a new maternal relationship between his Mother and all Christian disciples in all times and places. Just as the first Eve was mother of all living, so Mary, the second Eve, becomes the Mother of all who live in Christ, and Mother of the Church.

The invitation and challenge of today’s Gospel for us, then, is to do as the Beloved Disciple did. From that hour he took Mary into his own home. Here, the English translation fails to capture the richness of the original Greek. In that sentence the verb “take” can also be translated as receive, accept, or welcome personally. More tellingly, the phrase translated “into his own home” reads more literally “into the things that were his own.” So an equally accurate translation might be that the Beloved Disciple “welcomed Mary into his life.” In that respect, he stands as a model and example for us all!

To any who may be seeking ways to welcome Our Lord’s Mother more fully into their lives, I heartily commend the Society of Mary as a fellowship of Christians who do our best to support one another in doing precisely that. If you think you might like to join us, then visit our website, somamerica.org, where you’ll find everything that you need to become a member. We’d love you to join us in our common endeavor to live into our identity as children of Mary, into whose maternal care Jesus, her divine Son, entrusted us in that most solemn moment recounted in today’s Gospel.