E23: The Mystery of Mary at the Cross

Why does the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows fall the day after we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross?

How is the birth of Jesus and his Presentation at the Temple connected with his mother being present at the foot of his cross?

Join us for the newest episode of Catholicism 101 as we reflect on the Mystery of Mary as the New Eve and what’s really happening at the foot of the cross.

Resources:

A Question of Faith: When Was the Church Born? | The Catholic Telegraph

From Mother to Woman: Mary’s Role at Cana | Venerable Fulton Sheen 

The Unity Cross – Mosaic & Crucifix

Mary as New Eve, the Mystical Rose - images

"The Cross as a Wedding" | Venerable Fulton Sheen

Evidence for Mary’s Painless Childbirth | Catholic Answers

Theology of the Body & The Marian Mystery | TOBI

These Alone Are Enough · Dan Schutte
Journeysongs Third Edition: Volume 21 ℗ 2012 OCP. All rights reserved. All selections BMI. | Streamed with permission under ONE LICENSE #A-727031

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hi friends. Welcome back to another episode of Catholicism 101, Forever Learning and Living the Faith. I uh Andrew is so glad to be back with you all today after a slight hiatus. Um but fear not, we're back. Um and also, excuse my voice, getting over a cold. It's cold and flu season, you know how it is. But nonetheless, um I'm glad to be back with you all today. So today's episode um is centered around the upcoming feasts. So first, uh today, currently it is September 11th, um, and this weekend on Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and then the day after, um, Monday, the 15th, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Um, and without speaking too much, just on current events, um, I do believe that there is a divine providence in these two feast days coming up this weekend. Um, and I just pray that in this episode, um, and as you listen to it, whether it be in the midst of everything occurring right now or at any point um that the Lord takes something from it um and and it stirs in your heart a new way, um, a new hope. Just a new deeper hope, uh, most especially as we celebrate this Jubilee year of hope. So, with this um just prayerful background and mindset, let's let's go ahead and get into this and let the Lord just get to work. So, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, it is celebrated every year on September 14th. And it is this date because it commemorates the discovery of the true cross by Saint Helena. Um, and she was the mother of the Emperor Constantine in the year 320 AD. And then the following day, September 15th, uh Pope Pius established the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. And this feast commemorates the seven sorrows of Mary. So those are number one, the prophecy of Simeon, two, the flight to Egypt, three, the loss of Jesus in the temple, number four, meeting Jesus. Mary meets Jesus on his way to Calvary. Number five, the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Number six, the taking down of Jesus from the cross, and finally, number seven, the burial of Jesus. These two feast days occurring back to back can really very easily seem uh like a couple of grim days for the church. And honestly, you might even consider wearing black to mass when you attend mass on these days. And there is there is a goodness and there is a truth in that. And we want to acknowledge that. We don't want to glaze over that. But in this episode, I want to highlight the heights of glory that is actually born from these deep depths of sorrow. And the church herself actually really she prays this so beautifully. Um the comedian antiphon for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, she prays, Rejoice when you share in the sufferings of Christ, that you may also rejoice exultantly when his glory is revealed. And Mother Church pulls that um from 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 13. Now, throughout our lives, especially here um in the Western Church, we learn that Pentecost is celebrated as the birthday of the church. And this is true, but because the church is a mystical body, her birthday cannot be contained by just one day. So the the church, she really has like three birthdays. Okay, so the earliest Christians um commonly said that the world was created for the sake of the church. So thus we can really say that the birthday of the church is at the beginning of time. Now, if we were to consider a day proper, a day as the church's proper birthday, we we could say that it is Good Friday. Um, St. Ambrose, they pull this from St. Ambrose in the Catechism in paragraph 766. He said, As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam's side, so the church was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging dead on the cross. Finally, um, the most popular celebration of the church's birthday is that of Pentecost, particularly as I said here in the West. Actually, in um the Eastern Church, um, they tend to emphasize Good Friday is the birthday of the church, which is really cool. Um, and neither one is better than the other. Um, there is a great harmony and there's a great beauty in celebrating both. Um, but yeah, it's so good. But at Pentecost, um the reason why we, especially in the West, celebrate Pentecost as the birthday of the church, is that it is when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and visibly sent the church on mission. Saint Pope John Paul II said, as the fathers teach, the church was born on the cross on Good Friday. She revealed this birth to the world on the day of Pentecost in her sacramental fullness. Now, as I said, in the West, we emphasize Pentecost as the birthday of the church, and in the east, they emphasize Good Friday. Again, there is goodness and beauty in both, but because we are we are primarily the church of the West, um, and as a learning opportunity, um, as we dive into what this episode is, the mystery of Mary at the cross, um, I want to borrow the emphasis from the East as Good Friday as the birth of the church. And this is why. So as we talk about the church in her infancy, this newborn church, um, there's a phrase I want to borrow from popular culture. Um, and it is that marriage and babies go together. So there is a much deeper meaning to this than the context that we often hear it. Um so whether we are the ones encouraging or whether we're the ones being encouraged, you know, not to live with a partner before marriage, or um, to have children together without being married, or to get married with no intentions of having children, um, the context that may or may not be those things that we hear the phrase marriage and babies go together, the truth that is at the core of this goes beyond what is simply right and wrong to do in the eyes of the Lord and in the eyes of his church. Because what if I told you that the scene of Mary at the foot of the cross with the beloved disciple who is John, it is not only the birth of the church proper, it is a wedding. What if I told you that every time we go to Mass, we celebrate this very marriage in this very birth? Uh the venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Um, he has really in um more modern times given rise to the popularity of the phrase the marriage bed of the cross, which was actually um really first given to us by St. Augustine. But Fulton Sheen brings it back to us, and so I'm gonna borrow the words of the wonderful, incredible, holy, venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and he says this. Now we've always thought, and rightly so, of Christ, the son on the cross and the mother beneath him, but that's not the complete picture, that's not the deep understanding who is our Lord on the cross, he's the new Adam. Where's the new Eve? At the foot of the cross. If Eve became the mother of the living in the natural order, is not this woman at the foot of the cross to become another mother? And so the bridegroom looks down at the bride. He looks at his beloved, Christ looks at the church. There is here the birth of the church. As Saint Augustine puts it, and here I am quoting him verbatim, the heavenly bridegroom left the heavenly chambers with the persage of the nuptials before him. He came to the marriage bed of the cross, a bed not of pleasure but of pain, united himself with the woman, and consummated the union forever. As it were, the blood and water that came from the side of Christ was the spiritual seminal fluid. And so from these nuptials, woman, there's your son. This is the beginning of the church. I I just really love Fulton Sheen. Um, and in the resources linked in the show notes, um, I have a couple of videos um of him speaking about this. You know, uh one of them, I think it's the one, two, three, four, fifth thing listed, the cross as a wedding. It's it's this short video of uh Fulton Sheen. And I'm pretty sure that's when he says this quote. Um, and then the second resource I have listed from Mother to Woman Mary's role at Cana, he does a really, really beautiful job um explaining why um Jesus says, Woman, behold your son, and then at Cana, woman, what does this have to do with us? Uh he explains that really, really beautifully. So um keeping keeping this quote of a Venerable Fulton Sheen in mind, every single time we celebrate Mass, we are brought to the foot of the cross. In fact, this moment on Calvary, where blood and water gush forth from the heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us, it lies at the center of all time. Now, um, I want to take a minute to explain um something that will easily break your brain, and it breaks my brain every time I think about it, but it's um the concept of time. So, you know, that we we have the concept of time that we live in. Um, but whenever we talk about God and we talk about um Calvary and the the birth of the church at the foot of the cross, um, and that being at the center of time and us going back to it every time we go to mass, we have to kind of pull ourselves, at least dry, um, out of our concept of time um into what divine time is really is. Um, and it we call it kairos. Kairos. And so whenever we think of time, we think of like a timeline, right? You know, there's a starting point, and then it goes on for a really, really long time. And then at some point there is an ending, right? So when we talk about Kairos, the Kairos, like time outside of time, divine time, um, like I said, it breaks our brains. It's very, very philosophical, but also metaphysical and incredibly, incredibly abstract. And like brain, our brains can't handle it. And so, what we're gonna do to at least try to get like a little crumb of it um and understand what we need to of it for this. I'm gonna give you a couple of images. So, the first one I'm gonna give you is the planet Saturn, right? Saturn is the one that has the rings. I have to be fully honest and say that there for a while um I was talking about it as Jupiter um because science was not my strong suit in school. And um, for some reason I had it in my brain that Jupiter was the planet with the rings, but it is not, it isn't indeed Saturn. So if I've tried to explain it to you using um the planet Jupiter and you left incredibly confused, that's my bad. Um, but to avoid that, uh you can picture Saturn if you'd like, but I'm gonna use kind of a silly image, a silly analogy that makes sense in my head, honestly, a little bit more, even though it's a little less realistic. Um, I think of an octopus holding a hula hoop. So the head of the octopus, uh it is a silly analogy, but it works and it makes sense for me. But if Saturn makes more sense for you, then picture that. Um like the head of the octopus or like the the bulk of the planet Saturn in the center, that is Christ. That is Christ on Calvary. And then the hula hoop around that the octopus is holding or the rings of Saturn, that is like human time. That is like our timeline, that is chronological time. Um, but instead of it being in just like this uh flat line, it is it is this circle. It is this circle that revolves around a center being, right? Um and honestly, the reason I like the octopus analogy a little bit better is not only because I'm a bit silly, but um because it has the octopus, like the tentacles holding the hula hoop, right? So where the center body is directly connected to time. Um and at points in time, we see this throughout history. There is no point in time where the Lord is not present. There is no point in time where the Lord is not present. Um, and so we are connected to the head. Time is constantly connected to Christ the head, that moment at Calvary, um, most especially by every single Mass. Every single time we go to Mass. When we get to the Eucharistic prayers, whenever we get to the Liturgy of the Eucharist, um, you may feel and it may see and smell and hear like you are still sitting in the pew of St. Mary of the Woods in Whitesville. Um, and it honestly it's probably gonna hear like it. We got a lot of little kids, and it is so beautiful. Um, but you're not in Whitesville anymore. Um, you you have been transported to the foot of the cross at Calvary. Most especially, um, the the moment that this all comes to a head is whenever um the priest holds up the newly consecrated. It is no longer bread and wine at this point, it is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. And he holds it up and he says, Through him and with him and in him, O God Almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours forever and ever. And we sing the great Amen. It is at that point where Christ is hanging from the cross, and we are all at the foot of the cross. Quick side tangent here. Um, that is why it is so important that you go to mass every Sunday. It is not necessarily, it is not just fulfilling an obligation. Um, the obligation is there to encourage relationship and remind you of the depth of relationship. Because if every time we go to mass, we are at the foot of the cross. Um, if you're not at Mass and everyone else goes to the foot of the cross and Jesus looks out and he doesn't see you there, that hurts your relationship with him. Going to Mass every Sunday as an obligation, having holy days of obligation, they are not just to fill um like fulfill criteria for being like a good Catholic or whatever you may think or say. Um, no, it is it is relationship-based. You know, every time we pray the station to the cross, um, when we do veneration of the cross on um Good Friday, we sing that hymn, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? That is why we have the obligation to go to Mass. Um because the church, Mary, wants us to be able to say yes. I was there. I was there when they crucified our Lord. And um on uh as we as we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows um this coming Monday, it it is tradition to um sing the Stabit Mater, which is um at the cross, her station keeping. Mary stood in sorrow weeping when her son was crucified. Were you there? Were you there? Now that I've um gotten that off my chest, out of my heart, um I want to share um in a particular way, you know, you you may at this point be like, um this episode this episode's about the mystery of Mary at the foot of the cross. We're talking about an octopus holding a hula hoop and like the concept of time and all of this. I'm like, yes, yes, yes. No, I'm I'm getting back to Mary right now. Um so specifically in Eucharistic prayer too, um, the these are the words of the epiclesis. So the epiclesis, um, it is that moment when the priest calls down the power of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts of bread and wine um in preparation for them to be consecrated, in preparation for the bread and wine to become the body and blood of Christ. Again, in Eucharistic prayer too, um the specific prayer is this Make holy, therefore, these gifts we pray, by sending down your spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now we've gotten a lesson in astrology, um, we've gotten a lesson in metaphysics and philosophy, and now we're getting a lesson in botany. So we're gonna talk about roses. Um Mary, as as uh Fulton Sheen tells us, and just as we know from the church fathers and in just the the tradition of the church for over 2,000 years, uh, Mary's the new Eve. And um, an incredibly beautiful title of hers is Rosa Mystica, the mystical rose. Now, the base of a rose is called the calyx, and that shares the same Latin root as chalice, right? Both root words mean cup. So just as um, you know, the purpose of the dewfall in the morning, the purpose of the dewfall in the morning is to water the plants, to water the flowers, to give life, right? To for these flowers to bloom. You know, the the dewfall is collected into this opened calyx of a rose, and it gives it life and it brings it beauty. Now, the chalice, the chalice at mass, the chalice that is holding uh the fruit of the vine, the work of human hands, it is it is crushed grapes that have been fermented. And one thing you may not know actually is that if you look at like the plant structure of a grape, of like a grapevine, the fruit, the grapefruit, like not grapefruits, but the fruit that is the grape, um, that is actually like the female reproductive part of um of the grapevine. Um you you could call the grapes the ovaries of the vine, and they have been crushed and they have been fermented and they have been placed in this chalice to receive new life as the blood of Christ. Okay there that is an even deeper meaning, honestly, than I was even really planning on getting into. But just as the morning dew fall is collected in the calyx, the opened calyx of a rose, and from that comes forth um just beautiful, beautiful blooms and beauty in life and and a beautiful smell. So too does that complete self gift of Christ find its home in the heart of Mary. There is um a Crucifix called the Unity Cross. And um what it is, I have the images, uh, I have a couple of images linked um in the in the show notes, the resources. It's the third link, it's the unity cross. There's a mosaic, and then there's like the crucifix proper. Um it depicts the Virgin Mary, the woman at the foot of the cross, as an icon of the church and of humanity receiving the blood of the crucified Christ in a chalice. It is the moment of the mystical spousal union of the new Adam and the new Eve. And I want to pull more words here from uh venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He says, in marriage, it is man who gives the seed. It is the woman who receives it, nourishes it, and brings it to life. The sower of the good seed is the son of man, the word of God. Hence, at the very opening of the side of Christ and the shedding of blood and water, giving life to the church, our blessed mother stood there as the mother of the church. So the the beautiful art um that is the the Unity Cross. Um and I would really encourage you to pull up those images I have linked. It's well, it's really technically one image. It's two images together in one image, but um there is a mosaic and then there is the the crucifix proper. You see Mary holding a chalice up to the pierced side of Christ, collecting his blood, um, and not only his blood, but the water. And there's something I haven't even mentioned that blood and water represents yes, the death of Christ, and yes, the birth of the church. But where we get the birth of the church from blood and water is from literal birth. You know, what what else in life is both blood and watershed? Birth. Um so Mary as the mother of the church is just receiving the gift of life that the Lord has given us by giving up his own life. Now I want to kind of jump back here to that uh that analogy, that image of the octopus with the hula hoop. Okay. And we've talked about, you know, the hula hoop represents like time, like our chronological time. And the head represents Christ, specifically Christ on Calvary. Um, but we haven't really talked about what the tentacles represent. And um, I would propose that the tentacles represent the blood and water that gushed forth from the heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us. Because listen, this is really, really cool. This is something I discovered um within the past probably six-ish months. You know, we know that Calvary is also called Golgotha, the place of the skull. Um, something that um I never really thought of was like whose skull? And I just honestly I just thought it was Christ's because um, you know, I I don't know. I just connected in my head that um like a skull means death. So he was killed at the place of the skull, he was killed at the place of death. Um, but when we talk about Golgotha as the place of the skull and we ask whose skull, we actually mean Adam. We mean Adam. Um and we read in scripture that after Christ is crucified, there is an earthquake, right? And we see actually to this day evidence of that earthquake following the death of Jesus. Um, if you go to the Holy Land, God willing, I get to go someday, if you go to the Holy Land um and you go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is um is Calvary, um the at the base of the cross, at the base of the cross, the very spot where the cross stood, where Christ was crucified, um, there is an altar over it, and there is this hole, and you are able to crawl under this altar and reach your hand down into the hole and touch the rock of Calvary. Now, once you do that, um, or on your way up there actually, uh you kind of climb down uh this this like a flight of stairs, um and you see the the rock of Calvary, right? And you see this big crack. You see this big crack in it. Um and if you keep going down, if you follow that crack down another level, um the crack at the base of the cross ends in a place called the chapel of Adam. And this is the place where Adam is believed to have been buried. Now, what is you know, there there's something unspokenly incredibly beautiful about that, but um the the great church fathers um tell us, and like just history shows us, and we even still see it today, that this crack from the foot of the cross down to the place of the skull, the chapel of Adam, um, it allowed the blood and water that flowed from the side of Christ to flow down into the earth upon the skull of Adam, redeeming him and all of the children of Adam, who is us. You know, we we are literally washed in the blood of the Lamb. Um, and there's a beautiful, beautiful just reality and just poetic mysticism and all of this, that the blood and water washed over the skull of Adam, thereby washing over all of us. And we take part of that by our baptism, um, but we are most intimately connected to that every time we go to mass. Now, actually, I want to read um from the preface of the Eucharistic prayer. So when when we're in uh when we go to Mass for the exaltation of the Holy Cross, the preface, um, I think it's the specific preface is um called the the the glory the victory of the cross. Okay, I had to pull out my magnificat. The preface, um, one of the preface options is from the victory of the glorious cross. And the words um are it is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere, to give you thanks, Lord, holy father, almighty, and eternal God. For you placed the salvation of the human race on the wood of the cross, so that where death arose, life might again spring forth, and the evil one who conquered on a tree might likewise on a tree be conquered through Christ our Lord. And then after that, uh he wraps up the preface, and we sing the holy, holy, holy with all the saints and angels as as Christ comes down to us as we are wed with heaven in that moment. Now you may um be asking, um, uh as we talk about all of like skulls, death, blood, um, you know, are weddings and babies supposed to be joyful? So um there's one thing with Mary at the foot of the cross that I haven't touched on yet that I that I want to finish with, um, that is an incredibly beautiful thing. Um, and that a lot of this is an area where many people um many many Protestants disagree with Catholics, and it's in regards to um Christmas. And did Mary suffer the pains of labor at Christmas? So, according to Saint John Damasin, the pains that our lady was spared in Bethlehem, so as Catholics, we believe that Mary did not endure labor pains um at the birth of Christ. The pains that our lady was spared in Bethlehem, she endured on Calvary. The birth of the head was in joy, the birth of the head of the church, Christ, was in joy, but the birth of the mystical body was in sorrow, the birth of the church was in sorrow. This um the the the labor pains being put off and spared at the joyous coming of the wedding of God with humanity. You know, God God becomes man. God becomes man, the w the wedding of uh the human and the divine, the incarnation, Christmas, the birth of Christ. That happens with great joy, right? And we celebrate and um we love Christmas, right? We love Christmas, and not just for the secular reasons, you know. Yes, the secular reasons are good and beautiful, and uh I enjoy myself, I enjoy myself some Christmas. But um the church clearly teaches that between Christmas and Easter, Easter is the greater feast, Easter is the greater holiday. I remember being a little bit confused when I learned that in maybe like sixth or seventh grade, uh, you know, they they said, which one do you think is the greater holiday? And we were all like, Oh, Christmas, duh. And they're like, No, it's Easter. And we're like, well, why? And they're like, well, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, we wouldn't have the church. And we're like, well, if Jesus wasn't even born, he wouldn't have risen from the dead. And our teacher was like, okay, touche. Um, but you know, as as I've as I've grown older, um Easter truly is, you know, the better holiday. And um there is something to be said about um you don't know the heights of glory until you know the depths of sorrow. Right. Whenever um someone falls ill and um you don't know if they're gonna make it or not, there is a a great deep sorrow in that but whenever um, God willing they pull through and you know, they walk again, and you never thought they would walk again. You didn't even know if they would live. Suddenly you have never been more joyful and more thankful to see that person not only alive but walk, right? We don't know how good joy um and glory can be until we know how painful sorrow is. And and uh Good Friday serves that very purpose. And so the fact that um the labor pains were delayed until Good Friday, there's something really, really beautiful about that that actually highlights the greatness of Easter. But um, this is actually the very prophecy that was fulfilled um Simon or excuse me, Simeon's prophecy, when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the uh to the temple for his presentation. Uh we read in Luke chapter 2, verses 33 through 35. Jesus' father and mother were amazed at what was said about him, and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted, and you yourself a sword will pierce, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. The joy of Christ's birth at Christmas, and this beautiful gift of painless labor that was given to Mary at the birth of her son. Um this became a great strength, a source of great strength for the agony that would follow. But Mary, she always reminds us that the agony isn't the end. Death doesn't have the final say. Death and evil don't have the final say. The agony actually prepares us for the ecstasy. Our heart um is broken and it is stretched and it is heavy. So that the Lord can bring it to life anew. We we quite literally see this um in everyday life when we witness the joy and the excitement of a woman when she discovers that she is pregnant, and uh that joy, that excitement, that anticipation, uh the gift of the child that is to come, it becomes one of the many sources of strength that carry that woman through the agony of childbirth. But it is exactly that agony. You can't, you can't, you can't bypass it. You cannot bypass it. That very agony brings you to the ecstasy, the bliss, the joy of holding your newborn baby, uh, and just the sheer bliss and joy of all of the memories that are to follow that. Um, you can ask any mother or father, what was it like to hold your newborn son? What was it like to hold your newborn daughter for the very first time? There's nothing quite like it. You know, when we find um that words fail, especially in times of just sorrow and grief and confusion and frustration and anger and all of these things, when we find that words fail because our hearts are just broken, there's nothing there, we don't know what to do. Um it is precisely in that emptiness and that brokenness that the Lord can come in and bring new life. And Saint Paul says it the best in Romans chapter 8. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing to be compared with the glory to be revealed to us. So as we have begun to um learn more about and ponder and contemplate this mystery of Mary at the cross, you know, as the new Eve, as as the bride of Christ, as representative of us all, as the mother of us all. I really just want to end this episode. Um instead of the little Diddy that typically plays at the end, uh, I I really just want to end it um with a song that just has been popping up as I've recorded this, and it's just popped up a lot in my own life and in my own prayer recently. Um, and so I invite you um to just pray with this song. Just let this song be a prayer um as you begin to really contemplate um what we've talked about today. But until next time, have a blessed day.