Of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Near the cross of Jesus. There stood his mother. His mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clovis, and Mary Magdalene. Seeing his mother there with a disciple whom he loved, Jesus said to his mother, woman, there is your son.
In turn, he said to that disciple, there is your mother. From that hour on, the disciple took Mary into his care. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son, and of the holy spirit.
Amen. In 1934, I had the extraordinary opportunity to see the passion play it over Amagao, and it was extraordinary because it was an unusual performance. There was some kind of an anniversary or something or other that just happened, when I arrived. I like to think that it was, you know, because in anticipation of my arrival. But anyway, the two things were coincidental.
1934, and at that time, the audience sat under a covered, huge covered building, but the stage which is was enormous was completely in the open with a background of the mountains. And it was raining, raining, raining. I remember a good many things about that play. Two of them was the end of the two that stand out, one was the ending. It had been it's you know, there are two sessions, one in the morning and then one in the afternoon.
We were it was raining all morning, then we had an intermission for lunch, we came back and it was still raining. But, at the time of the crucifixion scene, against that background of the mountains and the sky, it was completely black and drenched in rain. And when we got around to the resurrection, that all cleared up, and out came the mountains and a brilliant sun. That too was a coincidence. The second thing that I remembered very distinctly about it, remember it's a it's a very it was the play was written centuries ago, and it's not highbrow.
It was written for very ordinary people, mostly peasants. So, it emphasized considerably, we would call the sentimentalities of our human nature. Some people don't like them. But there's one thing that wasn't sentimental, and that was our blessed mother. The way she was depicted, the way she was characterized impressed me deeply.
Well, had to. You don't you know, that's that's nearly fifty years ago. God's sake, I can't believe it. But anyway, it was. And the the it summed up in this words of Saint John that Mary stood by the cross of her son.
She didn't faint. She didn't go into depression. She was didn't go into hysterics. She wasn't carried away. She wasn't distraught, she stood by the cross of her son.
Stood by the cross of her son. To me, that sentence is fantastically meaningful. Fantastically. It doesn't mean she wasn't sorrowful. We are celebrating the sorrows of them of our blessed lady today.
It doesn't mean she was without tremendous, a profound grief, but she stood by the cross of her son. How much she understood or didn't understand, I don't know. I'm not gonna write the psychology of the blessed mother. Some people do, and you get volumes of it, but it's pure fiction. Pure fiction.
Propaganda, in many instances. But we know that Saint John says she stood by the cross of her son. She wasn't in the distance, She wasn't she wasn't, down in from the in the little declivity there, but she stood by the cross. Apparently, she was right up there. And if you've any of you've been in the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre, well, you'll know how that is elevated over the sepulchre, which is in the bag.
She stood by the cross, and we celebrate the sorrows of our blessed lady. Now this is the point I wanna make. So many good, honest, sincere Catholics and Christians, they feel guilty. Now I'm not exaggerating this. They feel guilty.
They feel that in some way they are not measuring up to what Christ expects of them. When tragedies of of all kinds of sorts hit them, or when death comes, loss of a dear one in more ways than death, When all kinds of the whips and slings of outrageous fortune come and clobber them, clobber They feel that they're not living up to to what Christ expects because they react as human beings, because they are irritated, because they get impatient, because they they weep, because they are sad, because they can't they say, I cannot translate this even when I look at Christ and ask him to accept it as an offering. I can't do it. What are they doing when they're doing that? Do you follow me?
When you have a burden which you feel you can't bear and you say to Christ on the cross, Lord, I bear this with you. And you then you come and tell me that you don't do it because you did it with you did it with sadness, you did it with impatience, you did it with irritation, you did it with why me, o lord? Why me? That's perfectly normal. For heaven's sakes, think of Jesus Christ.
In the preface of every mass, we say we have this sense that that Christ accepted his passion and death freely. Yes. He accepted it freely. But that doesn't mean he didn't weep tears of blood in Gethsemane. See, people forget this.
People forget it. They feel they have some picture of being Christ like by having being being undisturbed when the whole world around them is falling apart. Why wouldn't they be disturbed? Why wouldn't they be distraught? Why wouldn't they be deranged?
That's perfectly human than they are. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt you are human, redeemed by Jesus Christ. Now put those two things together. That doesn't mean you renounce your humanity, but it means you transform it. But it doesn't mean you're always going to like it.
Christ did not like the prospect of Calvary, which he saw in Gethsemane. See, Gethsemane is a fact of Christ's life. He didn't get up from the last supper in a very fine glow and then march to Herod, to Pilate, go on his way to Calvary. That's not the way it was. And I believe in beginning with what is.
I'm an existentialist in that regard. Christ did not go to Calvary from the upper room. He went to Gethsemane when he couldn't bear the thought of what was in store for him, and his sweat became as blood, drops of blood. And his disciples slept. He was isolated.
He was abandoned. Even the closest people to him in this world went to sleep in his moment of dire need. They weren't even praying with him. Did Christ know what it is to be clobbered, my favorite word? He certainly did.
Christ was truly human. Did you notice the first reading to Hebrews today? That emphasizes the humanity of Christ. Have you see today, many of us, most of us, if not all, we accept Christ's humanity without any trouble. Because in many instances, we've lived through generations that tried to tell us with all the canal with all the glamour and apparatus of scholarship that Christ was indeed truly a most exalted and good man.
But of course he wasn't God. You see, in the early church it was just the reverse. There was such so much neo platonism around that the people, good Christians, couldn't accept the fact that God could be human, that God could be encapsulated as it were in a human frame because they so downgraded humanity, which means our emotions, our sentiments, our feelings, our bodies, our appetites, our sexuality, our loves. They downgraded that. See, that was mean stuff.
What mattered was my soul. My soul. So you say, well, what was this on the cross? Oh, they said that was appearances. That that was merely an appearance of humanity.
So he Paul is writing to the Hebrews, and he says, no. Son of Mary, born of a woman, human. That's our lord. That's Jesus Christ. But one person, the son of god, and that's the person who knelt down or something or other probably flopped on the ground in Gethsemane.
At the very thought of what was in store for him. And what is what's what's the great punchline there? Not my will, but thine be done. And I come back right on those words with what I began. How can you fail to understand that you are a good Christian, you are a faithful follower of Christ when you can look at Christ on the cross and say, in spite of everything I am at this moment, in spite of all my feelings and my irritations, my anger, my resentment, my frustrations, thy will be done.
In the name of the father, and the son, the holy spirit. Amen.