NOONDAY PRAYER & STATIONS

Good Friday 

April 18, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

John 19:25-27

 

In a few minutes, we’ll be participating in the devotion known as the Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross. One part of this devotion’s appeal, I believe, is that it emphasizes the role of women in our Lord’s Passion and death on Good Friday. In Station Six, a woman from the crowd, traditionally named Veronica, wipes the face of Jesus. And in Station Eight, Jesus addresses the women of Jerusalem, who are bewailing and lamenting him. The Blessed Virgin Mary features explicitly in Stations Four, Twelve, and Thirteen. The hymn Stabat Mater, traditionally sung during the procession from one station to the next, views the Way of the Cross from the viewpoint of Jesus’ Mother: At the cross her station keeping / Stood the mournful mother weeping / Close to Jesus at the last.

 

Today I want to focus specifically on Station Twelve, Jesus dies on the Cross. The appointed reading for this station quotes the Passion according to Saint John: “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!’”

 

The following verse adds: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” Some biblical scholars suggest that Jesus’ 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 supports belief in 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 knows, 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.

 

To understand the deeper meaning of what’s happening, we need to look at two more words that John uses. First is the Lord’s form of address to his Mother: “Woman.” In that cultural and linguistic context the term is not as 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.” So now, when John remarks that “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home,” we’re given to understand that this hour he’s been speaking about all along has finally arrived.

 

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 fulfills this image of the woman in travail and sorrow because the hour has come. Some early Christian writers describe Our Lord’s sufferings on the Cross and his Mother’s sorrows as a kind of birth pangs of a new creation. And 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 John’s 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.

 

When Our Lord names the Beloved Disciple the son of Mary, and Mary the Mother of the Beloved Disciple, the unavoidable implication is that he’s instituting a new 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.

 

The invitation and challenge to us, then, is to do as the Beloved Disciple did. Alone among the disciples, he remained at the foot of the cross when all the other disciples fled. And from that hour he took Mary into his own home. John’s Greek can also be translated more broadly, to signify that he “welcomed Mary into his life.” In this respect, he stands as a model and example for us all! At the foot of the cross, we become sons and daughters of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, into whose maternal care her divine Son, entrusts us in that most solemn moment.