A Mother's Suffering

This is Holy Week. All my devotions ask me to pray about the suffering of Jesus during this time. While I can do that intellectually, it isn't until I pray about Jesus' mother, Mary, that my heart breaks wide open and the tears flow...

 As a mother, I can feel the joy she must have felt as he preached, as his ministry spread. She can feel his exhaustion and knows how dangerous his ideas are to others. I know how she longs to comfort him, to hold his hand while he prayed. I can sorrow with her in the understanding that not one of his friends will stay awake and pray with him. But his mother would. Mothers are always on-call for comfort and support. She would say to him...'you rest now; I'll keep watch over you as I did when you were a baby' ....fully knowing there is nothing she can do to prevent the events of this week unfolding. I am angry and indignant with her as she watches him being scourged and tormented and mocked...her child! How dare they do that to him! I flinch with her and my gut tightens as we listen to each nail being pounded in. Oh, the agony! And I can weep with her as she stands by the cross watching the life fade from his eyes as he gives up himself to his heavenly Father.

Mary, who unlike us, doesn't know the rest of the story until she hears the rumors on Sunday. The tomb is empty; He has risen!

As God's servant, she rejoices. But as Jesus' mother, she still weeps bitter tears, and I weep with her. He is gone forever from her life. She will never hug him or lean on his arm for support again.  Never again will he sit at her table to share a meal and later talk with her of his dreams, his ideas, and his Father's plan for him. There will be no grandchildren; no daugher-in-law to help her in her old age. Jesus will not be there to hold her hand and weep for her when she dies. There is an empty place in her heart that will never again be filled...in this life

But today, Maundy Thursday, she does not yet know all this. All she knows is that tonight, Jesus will share the Passover meal with his friends, his disciples. They will break bread, drink wine, say the prayers and sing the songs. He will not eat at her table tonight for already he belongs to the world.

A mother weeps and suffers.