Praying the Stations of the Cross with St. Joseph
The Fourth Station - Jesus Meets His Mother
Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes the eyes say it all. And there, on that road, as son meets mother, eyes speak for a pierced heart. Eyes speak for a broken body.
He tried to form words. But his pain and his exhaustion, his parched lips and his tongue that clung to the roof of his mouth muted the words. Her eyes squinted and looked deeply, lovingly into his. “Don’t, my son,” they said. “I know.”
She recalled the words He spoke to her when she and Joseph searched everywhere to find their twelve-year-old son, only to discover Him among the elders in the Temple. “Why were you searching for me,” he asked. “Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?” And today, carrying the cross towards his tragic destination, He is about His Father’s business. It is the business of complete, unearned, underserved, unconditional love. It is about having no greater love than to lay down His life for those who are beloved. It is about fulfilling a promise first made in the Garden of Eden and reiterated, time and time again, by the prophets to make right the sin of Adam. It is about redemption. It is about eternal life.
Sometimes there are no words. How do you really say, “I love you” and convey the depth, intensity and sincerity of that love through words. Words betray us in the moments we most could use them, and the eyes say it all. Jesus and Mary’s eyes met, and the “I love you” need not be spoken. They knew.
As the soldier, roughly and contemptuously separated mother from son and forced Jesus to continue the slow, pain-filled journey to the site of His crucifixion, a word finally came to Mary’s lips. It was the same word she spoke to the angel in accepting God’s will to become the mother of the Son of God. Did she whisper it to herself, or did she scream it out for her son to hear? “FIAT!!!” “Let it be!”
Let us pray, St. Joseph, when you and Mary brought Jesus to be presented in the Temple when He was an infant, Simeon prophesied that a sword would pierce Mary so that the thoughts of many hearts would be revealed. But a sword pierced your heart, too, when having already died, you could not protect Jesus from the torturous pain He endured in His passion, nor the piercing sorrow in Mary’s heart as she witnessed the cruelty inflected upon Him. O Sacred Heart of Jesus, O Immaculate Heart of Mary, O most Chaste Heart of Joseph, protect me from all danger, from all that would injure my body and my soul, my heart and my spirit. Unite my breaking heart to yours.
St. Joseph, Husband of Mary and Protector of Virgins, pray for us.
