STATION IV: Jesus Meets His Mother

Before the station, pray: I adore you, O Christ, and I bless you, because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.

Read Luke 1: 35-55

The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”…Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

She loved her son…loved him with the deepest love that any mother would. After all, this was the child that she carried in her womb, birthed into the world in the rough hues of that cold desert night shielded only by a stable, or a cave, or a grotto, or something of the like. This was the child that she nurtured and saw grow into a successful young man. And now here he is…carrying the cross like a common criminal…bleeding and exhausted…but she is held back from approaching him. What she is called to do is atrocious. She must give him up.

But what about God? This is God’s child—one that God created and loved and with perfect love gave him to the world as a part of Godself. And this perfect love, this part of God, is being rejected by those to whom he was given.

But even in this we are called to forgiveness, the forgiveness that God showed us through the deepest love of a mother’s heart. Father, forgive.

Jesus, may your love, and that of your mother, be the spark of my zeal in the cause of spreading justice and peace throughout the human family. In the name of the One who brings all unity. Amen.