Rightly, we honor Our Lady of Sorrow's in the Pieta, the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary, the seven sorrows prophesized by Simeon. The heartbreak of a mother seeing her son suffer is a staple of Catholic piety. Put perhaps there is a problem of balance: she is also the one who crushes the head of the serpent. She is Our Lady of Victories. With her son she is triumphant over sin, death, guilt, the world and the devil. She is determined, steadfast, ferocious, fearless, courageous, long-suffering, hopeful, magnanimous, longanimous, exultant and victorious. She is not pitiable. She is not a victim. She, with her son, is victor.
Recall the mother of seven sons in Maccabees. Her sons are being tortured to death, one at a time, by the gentile Greeks who insist they eat pork and adore false gods. She is free of a soft, sentimental pity. She does not seek to shield them from pain and suffering. She exhorts them to courage, perseverance, loyalty to God and their faith.
The masterful Mel Gibson film The Passion of Christ is overheavy with pain and torture but redeemed by many scenes. The crucial one is half way through the movie: Christ falls under the cross and Mary bends down close to his face. He looks at her, his face grotesque with bleeding. Serenely, confidently, even ecstatically he says: "Mother, see, I make all things new." This was a brilliant touch by Gibson. We have, of course, no record of him saying this on his walk up Golgotha. But it is the point of the entire drama: he is making all things new by his passion and death. When he stretches out his arms, in pain, on the cross, he embraces the entire world, and every sinner, as he turns and tells his companion " this very day you will be with me in paradise." This was the ultimate moment of victory!
Consider also Jesus encounter with the women of Jerusalem, recalled in the 8th station of the cross. Falsely, it is usually called "Jesus Comforts the Women of Jerusalem." This is blatantly wrong. There is not comfort here. He flatly rejects their pity and comfort. He says: "Do not weep for me but for yourselves." He warns them of the suffering to come upon themselves and their children as a day of judgment is coming. He is calling them to repentance from sin. And to ready themselves for the imminent suffering. This is severely discomforting. It is a call to conversion, to courage and endurance. It is a word meant to sober and strengthen. There is here severity, ferocity, brutal honesty.
Contemporary Catholic, especially progressive piety, is saturated with an effete, toxic ethos of sentimental pity and victimhood. The "bleeding heart" grieves victimhood in Ukraine, Gaza, the ghetto, the "LGBTQ community." This does not spring from a genuine, holy femininity...that of Mary and the Mother of seven. Rather, from a decadent feminism. It flourishes in distance from the actual people pitied. The Ukrainians are tough, resilient people who want to fight the Russians for their sovereignty. The Palestinians in large number approve of the slaughter/rape that started the war. The gay community is now privileged, affluent and powerful. Black men are not powerless, pitiable victims of systemically racist police.
Protestants mostly avoid crucifixes with the suffering body of Jesus. Catholics glory in that image, and in the 14 stations, the 5 sorrowful mysteries, the Pieta and our Lady of Sorrows. But, Jesus suffered for three hours on the cross. It was temporary. He reigns, with his mother-virgin-queen at his side, eternally in unending Joy.
I imagine that Jesus in carrying his cross and looking down from it, to Mary and John and the women, in his fragile, vulnerable flesh was heartened by the presence of his mother, the women, and his beloved disciple. He did not feel viewed with pity, as a victim. Rather, he was heartened by their pride in him, his courage, his fidelity, and his triumph.
May we be just such encouragement to each other.
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