{"id":3331,"date":"2007-01-19T22:30:06","date_gmt":"2007-01-20T03:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theanchoressonline.com\/2007\/01\/19\/mary-and-the-crucifix\/"},"modified":"2017-03-17T18:55:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T18:55:29","slug":"mary-and-the-crucifix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theanchoress\/2007\/01\/19\/mary-and-the-crucifix\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary and the Crucifix"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Reposted from November, 2005<\/a>. I stumbled on this tonight and realized that when I wrote it my friend Jane<\/a> was dying and none of us knew it, not even she. And my BIL thought he would live<\/a> to be 99, just like his mother and father. Things turn on a dime. Thought I\u2019d post this again; it\u2019s good to remember that things can look very different<\/a> 12 months later \u2013 that it is always good to take time to appreciate what we\u2019ve got.<\/em>
\n
\nWE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, OUTSIDE OF TIME<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I have been corresponding<\/strong> with a friend who is enduring the loss of a beloved family member \u2013 his grief is still very new. My grief for my brother S<\/a> is a little older. It was just a bare week or so ago that I noted the passing of one year since he entered hospice. It is older, but not much easier.<\/p>\n

I have lost birth-mother, birth-father, one<\/del> two<\/em> brothers from my birth family, one brother from my new family (my husband\u2019s family are my family in a way my birth family never could be\u2026) and a brother-in-law who had been \u201cmy brother\u201d since I was six<\/a> years old. In every case, it has been very hard \u2013 sometimes surprisingly hard \u2013 no matter what sort of relationships we had.<\/p>\n

With S, of course, there was great closeness<\/strong>, and so the pain of losing him has been exquisite<\/a>. But two Novembers ago I lost my brother D. He was 13 years older than I, and had been in bad shape, physically, for 30 years, owing to a massive stroke at age 20, one which had enormous impact on my whole childhood and adolescence. He was \u201cthere\u201d but \u201cnot there\u201d and could never be cared for at home. You\u2019d think after 30 years, I\u2019d simply be relieved that his long torment was over, but no \u2013 I grieved for the life he had and the one he didn\u2019t have and cried for weeks and weeks, until my husband finally took his pictures down and hid them from me.<\/p>\n

With my brother J -who was almost 20 years my senior- there was just such regret for his own life of sadness<\/a>, of which I had little part.<\/p>\n

My friend wrote<\/strong> that he was trying not to be angry at God, whom he loves, but that he was finding it difficult, as were other family members.<\/p>\n

But anger at God is normal. And God has big shoulders, He can take it. <\/em><\/p>\n

I have found that when it is too much to think of God<\/strong>, it\u2019s easier to think of Mary, who \u201cnever did anything to deserve it,\u201d -who spent her whole life only saying \u201cyes\u201d to Him, and in service to His biggest project, ever- but who still had to stay at the foot of her son\u2019s cross and watch him die a most horrible death, after having endured terrible cruelty.<\/p>\n

Even she didn\u2019t know what was going to happen next. A mother grieves the unbearable loss of her son, through Passover, and then goes to anoint his body only to find it gone!<\/p>\n

What sort of torment is this<\/em>?<\/strong> Then he is back (!) but he is no longer hers alone, if he had ever been \u2013 and for the rest of her life, as she watches His church take shape and form, and helps where she can, she still has all of those memories \u2013 the memories a mother cherishes \u2013 of an infant tugging at the collar of her gown, looking to nurse, of her son and his loving six-year-old hugs, the scraped knees, the scampish days, the meals they shared. None of this could have been easy for Mary to remember or to reconcile with her human self, or her maternity. He is God. But he was her son, and always will be. He is<\/em> her son. Her little lad. Her God.<\/p>\n

And this is why we call Mary the \u201cHelp of Christians.\u201d<\/em> When it gets very hard, when we feel a little disconnected from God, whether we want to be disconnected or not, when we feel we have been given an unjust burden, we can look at Mary and realize that yes, she kept the faith, but she knew everything we know about how hard life can be. She\u2019s lived through it, and if we ask her to, she\u2019ll pray for us in our suffering.<\/p>\n

The cross. The Mother. The Son. Nothing in the Gospels is extraneous, or there without purpose. It is all meant for us, for our understanding and our consolation, too.<\/p>\n

People often ask me why Catholics find it necessary to keep the Crucifix before them. \u201cThe victory was in the resurrection, not the death; Catholics focus on the wrong thing \u2013 the cross should be empty\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, yes. The victory is the resurrection, but its gotten to through the rest of it.
\n
\nWhile the empty cross brings us hope and promise,<\/strong> we are still humans living human lives with all of the pain and frailty and questions and hurt that implies; when one looks at the Crucifix, one finds not a morbid and bloody corpse, but The God Who Knows,<\/em> not because he is conveniently all-knowing, but because He actually submitted<\/em> to life, lived it, endured it, went through<\/em> it all, just as we do.<\/p>\n

Jesus lost his own beloved step-father, Joseph, he knows<\/em> what we know. When we look at the Crucifix we see that there is no human situation that Jesus did not come to know. Feel betrayed? Feel humiliated? Being mocked and sneered at? Feel abandoned? Feel unjustly hurt? Feel loss? There, on that crucifix is the God who has known every one of those feelings, and has submitted to them \u2013 in order to save us, but also in order to draw us near, to gather us into a consolation, a consoling embrace that says\u2026\u201cI know what you\u2019re feeling\u2026I know what you\u2019re thinking\u2026we are actually all in this together, and quite outside of time.\u201d
\n<\/em>
\nIt\u2019s hard to remember all that. The Crucifix is the reminder.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reposted from November, 2005. I stumbled on this tonight and realized that when I wrote it my friend Jane was dying and none of us knew it, not even she. And my BIL thought he would live to be 99, just like his mother and father. Things turn on a dime. Thought I\u2019d post this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,61,141,165,209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholicism","category-crucible-of-faith","category-jesus-christ","category-mary","category-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\nMary and the Crucifix<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Reposted from November, 2005. 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