The following is almost entirely a reiteration of a Holy Week post from 2010. Fifteen years more of life experience has only sharpened the emotions I was feeling then.
Is there anything worse than excruciating physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual torture and death? It takes nothing from the sufferings of Christ commemorated this Holy Week to pause and consider a couple of other important persons in the drama.
I find the following hymn to be one of the most powerful and moving of the season. For obvious reasons, it is usually sung on Palm Sunday, but the verses reach all the way through to Easter.
Ride on! ride on in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes hosanna cry;
Thy humble beast pursues his road
with palms and scattered garments strowed.
Ride on! ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
O Christ, thy triumphs now begin
o'er captive death and conquered sin.
Ride on! ride on in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky
look down with sad and wond'ring eyes
to see the approaching sacrifice.
Ride on! ride on in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
the Father on his sapphire throne
expects his own anointed Son.
Ride on! ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
then take, O God, thy power, and reign.
The Father on his sapphire throne expects his own anointed Son. For millennia, good fathers have encouraged, led, or forced their children into suffering, from primitive coming-of-age rites to chemotherapy. Even when they know it is for the best, and that all will be well in the end, the terrible suffering of the fathers is imaginable only by someone who has been in that position himself.
And mothers?
The Protestant Church doesn't talk much about Mary. The ostensible reason is to avoid what they see as the idolatry of the Catholic Church, though given the adoration heaped upon male saints and church notables by many Protestants, I'm inclined to suspect a little sexism, too. In any case, Mary is generally ignored, except for a little bit around Christmas, where she is unavoidable. But in Holy Week, it's important to recognize that, whatever else Mary may have been and done, on Good Friday she was a mother who had just lost her son.
Did she recall then the prophetic word of Simeon when Jesus was but eight days old: "a sword shall pierce through your own soul also"? Did she find the image of being impaled by a sword far too mild to do justice to the searing, tearing torture of watching her firstborn son wrongly convicted, whipped, beaten, mocked, crucified, in an agony of pain and thirst, and finally abandoned to death? Did she find a tiny bit of comfort in the thought that death had at least ended the ordeal? Did she cling to the hope of what she knew in her heart about her most unusual son, that even then the story was not over? Whatever she may have believed, she could not have had the Father's knowledge, and even if she had, would that have penetrated the blinding agony of the moment?
In my head I know that the sufferings of Christ, in taking on the sins of the world, were unimaginably greater than the "mere" mental and physical pain of injustice and crucifixion. But in my heart, it's the sufferings of God his Father and Mary his Mother that hit home most strongly this Holy Week.
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Do you know the song Stabat Mater (At the cross, her station keeping)?
Thank you, Kathy! I'm quite familiar with the name, since it has been set to music by so many of the great composers, but in all my choir experience I have never sung it, a consequence perhaps of having always sung in Protestant churches of one sort or another. So I never knew the text until now. The first four verses could make a good hymn or anthem for Mother's Day without offending Protestants. Mary is an example and comfort for recently bereaved mothers whose hearts cannot celebrate the occasion. For similar reasons, Coventry Carol should always be included at Christmas.
At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last:
Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,
All his bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has pass'd.
Oh, how sad and sore distress'd
Was that Mother highly blest
Of the sole-begotten One!
Christ above in torment hangs;
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying glorious Son.
Of course, the anthem should be sung in Latin, with a translation provided for the congregation. While understanding the sense of the song is essential, I've usually found that translations feel weak and lose part of what the composer intended. Maybe we should bring back expecting students to learn Latin in schools!
Stabat mater dolorósa
juxta Crucem lacrimósa,
dum pendébat Fílius.
Cuius ánimam geméntem,
contristántem et doléntem
pertransívit gládius.
O quam tristis et afflícta
fuit illa benedícta,
mater Unigéniti!
Quae mœrébat et dolébat,
pia Mater, dum vidébat
nati pœnas ínclyti.
Just for fun, here is Google's translation of those four verses:
The sorrowful mother stood beside the Cross, weeping, while her Son hung.
The sword passed through her soul, groaning, saddened, and in pain.
Oh, how sad and afflicted was that blessed one, the mother of the Only-Begotten!
How she mourned and grieved, the pious Mother, while she saw the punishments of her glorious Son.
