Mary Stands By Us

The past weeks have been heavy with tragic news, with disturbing images spreading on social media, with thoughts of hopelessness and helplessness in the face of conflict and violence. In the midst of this, Mary our Mother, our Queen of Peace, our Mother of Sorrows, can light the way.

Mary deeply knew human sorrow. On Mount Calvary, we see a mother standing before her son, an innocent man arrested and sentenced to hang from a wooden beam. Surely, she must have cried out his name in agony; surely she must have clutched her chest and gasped for breath; surely she felt like collapsing under the weight of such misery. The Gospels, however, offer no words on Mary’s lips as Jesus slips from life. There is only this textual detail: She stands by the cross. She stands by her suffering son. French artist James Tissot created a series of paintings capturing the moments of Good Friday; the final image titled “It is Finished” depicts Mary from behind, standing straight, arms steady, in a posture more like praise and adoration. It’s as if in the final moment, as Jesus breathed his last, the Sorrowful Mother once again sang the Magnificat: “My soul magnified the Lord. The Mighty One has done great things and holy is his name. He has shown strength with his arm and has lifted up the lowly.”

In this last painting by Tissot, the cross is no longer a perch for death; it transforms itself into a throne from which the Savior reigns. Mary is the first witness, the first believer, the first to receive the Good News that death and sorrow will soon be no more. Just as Christ transforms human suffering to make the cross a symbol of victory, Mary transforms our sorrow at the foot of the cross and shows us that our grief must never be divorced from hope.

In times of sadness and pain, let us remember that Mary stands by the cross and invites us to do the same, to look beyond the pain of this awful tree and see the cross as a gift, as our only hope. Let us turn to Mary, Mother of Sorrows and Queen of Peace, and follow her example as we sing God’s praises and endeavor to be beacons of hope in a world greatly in need.