Good Friday - Jesus Meets His Mother On Calvary
by Gloria Ssali
Title
Good Friday - Jesus Meets His Mother On Calvary
Artist
Gloria Ssali
Medium
Painting - Watercolour
Description
Good Friday is a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday. It is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Black Friday,[1] or Easter Friday,[2] though the latter properly refers to the Friday in Easter week
From the Gospel according to John 19:25
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
On the way to Calvary, Jesus sees his mother. Their eyes meet. They understand one another. Mary knows who her son is. She knows whence he has come. Here we gaze upon our Lord's own Mother, who (as Tradition says) also awaited Him on this painful journey. In the Via Dolorosa, or Way of the Cross, it is believed that there is a memorial of their sorrowful meeting.
Jesus, our dear and Blessed Master, on the way to Calvary must teach us at every turn, for His time is short. His most Blessed Mother, too, the first and most faithful of His disciples, is to serve us for an example on that way. Let us watch the meeting and see the kind of consolation they bring to one another in this hour of bitter anguish for both. What fortitude! What self-forgetfulness! What oblation of the strongest, holiest affection earth has ever seen! Mary's heart beats in perfect unison with the Heart of her Son. Like His, it throws itself into the Divine Will for the redemption of the world with a strength of purpose that sanctifies the instincts of nature. There is no shrinking in their self-immolation at the sight of the anguish of the One dearer to each than life. The Son and the Mother meet, but it is as the Redeemer and the Co-Redemptrix of the world. The sacrifice that their mutual love increases occupies them entirely.
Contemplate the meeting of the Mother and Son. Their eyes meet.----Dimly, through the tears and blood that obscure His sight, Jesus discerns His Mother's face, and His glance carries strength to her soul. He summons her, His well-beloved, to ratify the oblation made at Nazareth in the hour of the Incarnation, when she consented to become the Mother of the Man of Sorrows, the oblation made solemnly in the Temple on the day of His Presentation, and renewed again and again as the time of the Passion drew near: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." At every stage of His Redemption she has been, and is, His handmaid, waiting upon Him always, His solitary fellow-worker, on whose sympathy and absolute fidelity He can rely.
And now His hour has come, the hour of which He had so often spoken to her at Nazareth, the hour that was the subject of such earnest prayer put up together, as they knelt side by side; the hour for which He had promised to strengthen her, that, first in privilege as in dignity, she might drink deeper than any other of His chalice. His glance recalls all this to her now, and it is met by a response such as that handmaid alone could give. No cry escapes her. To bring Him the only comfort in her power, the assurance that she accepts with Him every jot and tittle of the Father's Will; that she does not grudge one pang, that she is ready for more, for the consummation of the sacrifice, for Calvary----this is her one thought. Mary cannot speak her Ecce Ancilla(Ecce Ancilla means Behold the Handmaid), her heart would break with a word to Him; but her eyes, her quivering lip, her clasped hands speak for her.
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March 29th, 2013
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