Eastertide #5

Behold Your Mother

(John 19:27)

It was a wonderful Mother’s Day Sunday—baby dedications and all. It just bothers me some that Mother’s Day Sunday intrudes into Eastertide. Wouldn’t it be better if Mother’s Day Sunday, like most civic holidays, could be celebrated after Pentecost when the calendar celebrates our “Ordinary Days”? After we celebrate the outpouring of Holy Spirit (Pentecost Sunday), we’re ready for our “Ordinary Days” that take up the rest of the year all the way to Advent.

But that’s not going to happen. You can’t mess with Mother’s Day Sunday. So let’s see if we can celebrate Mother’s Day Sunday within the sphere of Eastertide and the events of Holy Week? We do find motherhood there—on Mount Calvary of all places. While Jesus suffers on that Cross; Mary, along with those other Galilean women who followed Jesus all the way to Calvary, linger at the Cross watching and grieving. From the Cross, Jesus speaks to his mother: “Woman, behold your son!” It’s not a derogatory “woman”, for in the next breath Jesus calls her “mother.” Maybe it’s an upper case “Woman” as in “The Woman"—the mother of our Lord. While still speaking to his mother, Jesus turns to “the disciple whom he loved”, and says, “‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour on the disciple took Mary into his own household” (Jn 19:25-27). From the Cross, Jesus makes sure his mother is cared for. Tradition has it that John took care of Mary while pastoring the Ephesian church. I’m told you can find Mary’s tomb there to this day.