prepare Him room

Station 4:

Jesus Meets His Mother on the Way of the Cross

“His mother said to the servers, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’” John 2:5

Mary says 9 words total in John’s Gospel, and they are in the 2 verses below:
“When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’  [And] Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servers, ‘Do whatever he tells you’” John 2: 3-5

The only time Mary speaks in the entirety of this Gospel is to intercede on behalf of her newly married friends.  Jesus doesn’t seem particularly inclined to do this--in fact He tells her His “hour has not yet come”.  Yet the Blessed Mother somehow knows that He will not deny her this favor, and tells the servers to “Do whatever He tells you”.  That is Mary’s message to all of her children.  Our happiness lies in doing whatever He tells us to do.  In obedience to His will.

This 2 verse passage says everything about Mary.  If you ever look to the Blessed Mother, she will always point you to her Son.  If you ask something of Mary, she goes to her Son.  Even something as apparently trifling as a wedding wine shortage matters to her, because she is our Mother, and she cares about all that concerns us.  She went straight to Jesus for her friends, and Jesus, though not at first inclined to grant her request, did as His Mother desired.  

She always takes us and our petitions for her intercession straight to the Heart of her Son.  She, like any mother, wants others to love her Son as she loves Him.  I remember my friend Emily, after having her first son, saying how much joy it gave her when other people loved her little one.  How much more must the Blessed Mother of our Savior desire for others to love her child?  The One she loved from the beginning with all of her heart, mind, soul and body.  How precious those moments of carrying Him in her womb must have been to her.  

When He was in there, she could protect Him from the outside world that wanted Him destroyed from the very first moments of His life.  For those precious nine months, she got to be the barrier between her Beloved Son and sin with all of its’ heart breaking consequences. 

I am sure when she met her Jesus on the walk to Calvary, she wanted so much to be that barrier again. If she could have died in His place I am certain she would have. As certain as I am that my mama would die for me in a heart beat to save me.

But she understood the depth of true love. That she did not possess Jesus, though her very blood ran in His veins. He was not hers to keep, but God's to carry out His Divine Plan of Salvation. She let Him go in her exquisite humility and obedience, but never left His side. After all, she was His mama, and mama's never leave their babies to suffer alone if they have anything to say about it.

I thought the other day about the humility of Mary.  She was completely without pride and conceit. She was so empty of all things that would have filled her up and kept her from the Lord. She was so empty of them in fact, that she had enough room to hold God Himself in her womb.  Jesus could be at home inside this woman, because she desired God’s will as much as He did. Thus, she was the perfect first home on earth for Jesus.

This passage from a book called the Reed of God, for me, sums up what Mary's yes to God held within it.

“It must have been a season of joy, and she must have longed for His birth, but at the same time she knew that every step that she took, took her little Son nearer to the grave.  
Each work of her hands prepared His hands a little more for the nails; each breath that she drew counted one more to His last.
In giving life to Him she was giving Him death.
All other children born must inevitably die; death belongs to fallen nature; the mother’s gift to the child is life. 

But Christ is life; death did not belong to Him. 

In fact, unless Mary would give Him death, He could not die.
Unless she would give Him the capacity for suffering, He could not suffer.
He could only feel cold and hunger and thirst if she gave Him her vulnerability to cold and hunger and thirst.
He could not know the indifference of friends or treachery or the bitterness of being betrayed unless she gave Him a human mind and a human heart.
That is what it meant to Mary to give human nature to God.  
He was invulnerable; He asked her for a body to be wounded.
He was joy itself; He asked her to give Him tears.
He was God; He asked her to make Him man.
He asked for hands and feet to be nailed.
He asked for flesh to be scourged.
He asked for blood to be shed.
He asked for a heart to be broken.
The stable at Bethlehem was the first Calvary.
The wooden manger was the first Cross.
The swaddling bands were the first burial bands.
The Passion had begun.
Christ was man.”
The Reed of God, Caryll Houselander.

This Lenten journey, let us remember the first love that Jesus felt on this earth in Mary's embrace.

 
The first eyes that He gazed into, and the ones that continued to hold His gaze as He carried our sins upon His shoulders to Calvary, are the eyes of our Mother in Heaven. The one that shows us how to love Jesus as we are meant to.

She provided her body for His first resting place on earth. She had room for Him Who filled Heaven because she allowed herself to be emptied completely of all else that was not from Him. Jesus knocks on the doors of each of our hearts and asks if there is room for Him to dwell, for He never goes where He is unwelcome. He wants our bodies as His dwelling place now. Let every heart prepare Him room once again, as we began to do at Advent.  


Let us follow Him wherever He leads as Mary did, even to the Cross. Especially to the Cross. For the Cross is where He showed us what real Love does. 

Let us heed the advice of our perfect Mother in Heaven, and do whatever He tells us.