Easter: the tragedy of motherhood
THINK about it: a young man is given a mock trial, is tortured, brutalised and paraded through the streets until, finally, he is executed on a hill just outside the city. Betrayed by one friend and abandoned by the rest, he is accompanied by his mother who, in her anguish, must contemplate his agony. There she stands, lonely and forsaken, as his tormented body grows limp and then lifeless.
I was four years old when I first saw that terrible scene enacted on screen. It was Easter Sunday and my grandmother was watching George Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told, in which Jesus is played by Max Von Sydow. By modern standards, the treatment of the Crucifixion was tame. Still, it was enough to give this little child endless nightmares.
It was, I think, the sheer brutality of it that caused me such distress. We are all accustomed to seeing the Cross but few take the time to contemplate the extreme horror of a crucifixion. So bleak, so terrifying and, yes, so incredibly cruel.
I cried myself to sleep that night and vowed I would never watch that film again. But then, three years later, Franco Zeffirelli’s astonishing Jesus Of Nazareth was broadcast as a mini-series. The final episode was broadcast on Easter Sunday and, believing the intervening years had toughened me up, I summoned the courage to stay for the great drama on Calvary.
I still believe that no actor will ever surpass Robert Powell in the role of Christ. His passion and intensity imbued the Crucifixion scene with shock and awe. Numbed, I went to bed terrified.
Only once have I viewed Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ. I am not sure that I will ever do so again. In every way, it is the most accurate portrait of a crucifixion. But is it accuracy that we really want when it comes to the Passion?
When, for example, I look at a still from The Passion Of The Christ, my gaze fixes on a mutilated body. However, when I contemplate a painting of the Crucifixion by one of the great masters, I am drawn beyond the horror. It is as though, by peering deep into the scene on the canvas, I can somehow make sense of it.
For only great art has the power to ennoble everything it touches.
That is why no film of the events we commemorate this week can possibly compare with Michelangelo’s finest sculpture, the Pieta. The sculpture, which is housed in St Peter’s Basilica, depicts Mary holding the lifeless body of her son. We are struck by love, beauty and even the sorrow of the scene but never by horror.
This is death written in stone yet we do not instinctually turn away. We see the holes in Christ’s body yet we do not focus on them. And that is because we are confronted by a scene with which we have become all too familiar: a grieving mother lovingly embracing her slain child.
It is so easy to forget that what happened on that Friday afternoon in Jerusalem was not only a supernatural drama.
It was a human tragedy, one in which a young mother saw her son brutally killed. And then, as darkness fell on that desolate hillside, it was she who held and kissed Him.
How many times i n our recent history have mothers had to do likewise? How many times have they had to endure the silent sorrow of holding a child who had just committed suicide or who had died in a road collision?
How many t i mes have Irish mothers lovingly kissed a son or daughter tragically taken by drugs?
All too often, I’m afraid. And for them it is, as I say, a silent sorrow, for words simply cannot capture the depth of their anguish. They look upon their loved ones, recalling the very first time they did so, a time when a common destiny was forged out of true devotion.
This week, we recall the death and resurrection of Christ. It is a time for Christians to contemplate the mystery of salvation and the glory of redemption. But it is also a time to remember that, after all the bloodshed of that day on Calvary, there was a mother who, despite what she had just witnessed, confronted the death of her only son with dignity.
WHEN I look at the Pieta, I do not see horror but love. But this is no ordinary love, no mawkish display of affection. It is love so deep and true, so powerful and intense, that it is impossible not to love with her. It is impossible not to feel what she feels, not to see in her the hope of humanity itself.
Like all grieving mothers, Mary of the Pieta stares at her son in silence. Only her outstretched hand suggests that she finds the whole thing incomprehensible. Yet, she will soon carry on for the sake of those left behind.
In the days ahead, as we focus on the great events of salvation history, l et us not f orget the countless mothers who have faced such terrible trials with similar dignity and with similar hope. In them, as in the glorious Pieta, the meaning of Easter finds its true expression.