The Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Mother

V/. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.

R/. Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and his kingdom will have no end” (Lk 1:30-33).

Mary remembered these words. She often returned to them in the secret of her heart.

When she met her Son on the way of the Cross, perhaps these very words came to her mind. With particular force.

“He will reign... His kingdom will have no end,” the heavenly messenger had said.

Now, as she watches her Son, condemned to death, carrying the Cross on which he must die, she might ask herself, all too humanly: So how can these words be fulfilled? In what way will he reign over the House of David? And how can it be that his kingdom will have no end?

Humanly speaking, these are reasonable questions.

But Mary remembered that, when she first heard the Angel’s message, she had replied: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).

 Now she sees that her word is being fulfilled as the word of the Cross. Because she is a mother, Mary suffers deeply. But she answers now as she had answered then, at the Annunciation: “May it be done to me according to your word.”

In this way, as a mother would, she embraces the cross together with the divine Condemned One.

On the way of the Cross Mary shows herself to be the Mother of the Redeemer of the world.

“All you who pass by the way, look and see whether there is any suffering like my suffering, which has been dealt me” (Lam 1:12).

It is the Sorrowful Mother who speaks,

the Handmaid who is obedient to the last,

the Mother of the Redeemer of the world.

PRAYER

O Mary, who walked

the way of the Cross with your Son,

your mother’s heart torn by grief,

but mindful always of your fiat

and fully confident that He to whom nothing is impossible

would be able to fulfill his promises,

implore for us and for the generations yet to come

the grace of surrender to God’s love.

Help us, in the face of suffering, rejection, and trial,

however prolonged and severe,

never to doubt his love.

To Jesus, your Son,

honor and glory for ever and ever.

R. Amen.

All:

Our Father ...

Stabat Mater:

Christ above in torment hangs,

she beneath beholds the pangs

of her dying, glorious Son.

We will continue with Blessed John Paul II’s Stations of the Cross throughout the Lenten season here on Open Wide the Doors.