Originally published at crisis magazine
How much of the Passion did Our Lady witness, and how did she understand it? It’s an important question not just because she is the mother of God but because, as our Catechism teaches, Mary is the “Church’s model of faith and charity,” and thus “she is a ‘preeminent and…wholly unique member of the Church’; indeed, she is the ‘exemplary realization’ (typus) of the Church (CCC 967).” Thus, her experience of the last moments of Christ enables us to perceive the Passion as we should see it, as the perfect and pure Church should.
According to St. John, Jesus’ mother was at the very least present at the Crucifixion. We read: “But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Mag’dalene” (John 19:25). There is a rich Catholic tradition that aims to understand what this must have been like for the mother of our Lord, including from such luminaries at St. Anselm of Canterbury, as we read in The Passion of Christ Through the Eyes of Mary, a text compiled and translated by Fr. Robert Nixon, O.S.B.
Fr. Nixon argues that it is best to appreciate this work “as an example of
