XIII. Jesus is taken down from the cross.
Behold the wood of the Cross…
Pause and hold your heart and the world in your hands.
Jesus is taken down from the cross and is brought to the arms of his mother. We know this scene of the Pieta well. We can say nothing as we behold Mary’s heart-shattering loss.
We are no strangers to loss. We have–all of us–experienced brokenness: the brokenness of things, of people, even of ourselves.
Some of us know what it’s like to hold someone broken in our arms. There are simply no words.
We turn to Mary, and ask her to help us teach us to hold in our hearts all the brokenness we feel and to nurse all the losses that life has dealt for us.
For that was what Mary must have done as the cold and broken body of her Son lay in her arms. It was all she could do. It was what she had been accustomed to do every time something beyond her understanding unfolded: “She kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19; 2:51).
She must have recalled Simon’s words when the old prophet beheld the Christ Child in the Temple:
“Lord, let Your servant go in peace,
for Your Word has been fulfilled.
My eyes have seen Your salvation
which You have prepared for all men” (Luke 2:29-31).
Mary must have also remembered what Simon said afterwards when he turned to her: “A sword shall pierce your heart” (Luke 2:35).
She did not understand it then, but perhaps now she did as the cold and broken body of her Son lay in her arms.
We could only imagine her repeating the words she spoke to the angel at the Annunciation: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to Your Word” (Luke 1:38).
Let us linger here and keep Mary company in this supreme moment of a mother’s surrender to God’s Will as we listen to “Simeon’s Canticle.”
Feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and prayers below.
3 replies on “The Thirteenth Station”
Mama Mary is my model on how to keep in my heart all the sorrows and brokenness that pierced my life. I know in time, God will make all things beautiful🙏😇❤️
Teach me to be like the Blessed Virgin Mary… always faithful, yielding, humble, loving… Teach me, Lord, to be in touch with my own heart, to see you and radiate you to others
We turn to Mary, and ask her to help us teach us to hold in our hearts all the brokenness we feel and to nurse all the losses that life has dealt for us. – beautiful