and you yourself a sword will pierce
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
A sword truly did pierce the soul of Mary, just as Simeon had predicted it would. But this sword, these sufferings of Mary, were not without purpose. We read that it was because of the sword that pierced her heart that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. This is certainly a mysterious promise. What might it mean? It us it sounds as though witnessing the sufferings of Mary will help bring to the surface the truth of our relationship to her son.
Perhaps in seeing what Mary endured for the sake of love we will be awakened to a deeper love for her son within our own hearts, a hidden, and perhaps untapped power and motivation waiting to be unleashed. Or perhaps we will find that what is revealed in us is more like indifference than devotion. But even if the secrets that her sorrows reveal in us are not things of which we are proud it is still a service to us if they are brought out into the light of day.
The sorrows of Mary can help us know the truth about ourselves and where we are in our relationship with her son. And knowing that truth will enable us to grow. We need to be free from illusions, and this sword has the power to cut away illusions. We want to learn from her to be consistent in our love for Jesus, and not merely to love him at the superficial level where we tell ourselves the stories about ourselves that we prefer to believe.
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
We, like the beloved disciple, are meant to take Mary into our homes. Just as Eve was the mother of all of those born by natural birth so too is Mary meant to be the mother of all of those reborn in baptism, the mother of all of those who follow Jesus and keep his commandments. It is not a trivial point that it was in his most difficult moments that Jesus bestowed this gift of his mother on John and on us all. It was a gift that was a fruit of his own suffering and that of his mother. That he attended to it with his dying breaths is evidence of how important he considered it, for Mary, for the beloved disciple, and for us all. It was in this most sorrowful hour that Jesus gave us this unfathomably great gift. Some meditation on these sorrowful moments can help cut away any obstacles to the full blessing she is in fact meant to be. It is a mysterious process that does not work by obviously delineated logical steps. But it is powerful nonetheless to bring us closer to both the mother and to the son.
Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;
and when he was made perfect,
he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
It was not as though Jesus was not obedient before, but he now learned it from a human perspective, from the inside out. It was not as though Jesus himself lacked any perfection in the strict sense. But he was made perfect, that is, perfectly fitting, perfectly adapted to be the source of our salvation. There is something about the this suffering and sorrow that rips open the defenses we put up within our hearts to obstruct the work of God. There is something here that dispassionate arguments will never achieve. We behold an obvious and undeniable love that could not be displayed as perfectly in any other way.
Let us not flee from sorrow, as is our human tendency. Let us at least pause to inhabit it so that the sword of Mary's sorrows can do its work in us, that we might learn to prize Jesus as the source of our eternal salvation above all else, and because of that, follow in the footsteps of his own obedience.
But my trust is in you, O LORD,
I say, "You are my God."
In your hands is my destiny; rescue me
from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors.
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