Suffering Motherhood with Mary

Like most moms, I am a compulsive worrier.  Before the pandemic and riots began, my biggest fear was something hurting my daughter in a serious, even fatal, way.  I tell myself in calmer moments that we have created a very safe environment for her, so her odds are good.  Yet the cross of suffering motherhood still feels heavy.

When I hear about tragic accidents in other families, my fragile confidence is shaken.  With the additional current events, my heart and mind are in a state of constant anxiety.  How can I parent well when I am always afraid?

I found a beautiful answer in Mary’s motherhood.

Suffering Motherhood as Mary’s Reality

During my pregnancy, my husband and I consecrated ourselves and our baby to the Blessed Mother.  Since then, I have tried to be intentional about turning to Mary.  I try to trust her with everything, especially my little girl.  While asking for her help in bearing this cross, a powerful fact was placed upon my heart.

Mary knew something bad would happen to her Son.  She knew He was going to die and that she would witness His death.  The very thing which haunts all parents was Mary’s reality.  Worst of all, there was nothing she could do about it.

Mary and the Childhood of Jesus

Even with this impending doom, Mary’s duty was to be a good mother to her Son.  Though He was the Savior, He was to live through childhood first.  The Bible tells us that He was obedient to His parents, gifting us a tiny glimmer of His life at home.  He followed the traditional Jewish customs and grew in “wisdom and age and favor” under His parents’ direction (Luke 2).

At the time of Jesus’s presentation in the temple, Mary is told by Simeon that Her Son is indeed the Savior, but that she too will bear His burden: “and you yourself a sword will pierce.” (Luke 2: 35).  Pope Saint John Paul II wrote that this moment confirmed to Mary the true weight of her calling as the mother of the Savior.  In his encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, he wrote:

While this announcement on the one hand confirms her faith in the accomplishment of the divine promises of salvation, on the other hand it also reveals to her that she will have to live her obedience of faith in suffering, at the side of the suffering Savior, and that her motherhood will be mysterious and sorrowful. (Redemptoris Mater, 16)

To experience this while still in the throes of new motherhood would be crushing.  But Mary remained strong, and instead of collapsing from the sheer weight of her calling, she returned home with her husband and continued to care for her Son.

Mary’s Strength Empowers Her Son

The close relationship between Jesus and His Mother as depicted throughout the Gospels makes it clear that Mary succeeded in her duty.  She gave Jesus a wholesome childhood that empowered Him to complete His mission.  He was so confident in Her ability to lead souls, He entrusted humanity to her care in His final hours upon the cross (John 19:27).

Though it is an artistic depiction, I find great beauty in the way Mary and Jesus’s relationship is depicted in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.  Throughout the movie, Jesus is able to muster the strength He needs to bear His Passion by looking to His mother.  Mary, in turn, is strong for her Son, fighting Satan himself right alongside her little boy.

In one particular scene, Mary is waiting to get close to Jesus as He carries His cross.  As He approaches, she sees Him fall.  They flash between scenes of her running to Him on the road to Calvary and running to Him as a little boy after He tumbles while playing.  That scene in particular captures the essence of my main point and always brings me to tears.  Even in her perfection, Mary had the genuine heart of a human mother.

Mary, the Strongest Woman

From Jesus’ infancy, Mary knew Her Son would endure the worst type of suffering.  Throughout their lives together, she endured many trials that continued to remind her of her Son’s horrible destiny.  We recall these trials when we refer to her as the “Mother of Sorrows“.

Yet Mary did not give in to human weakness, which might have paralyzed her and left her unable to be the strong presence the growing Christ Child needed.  God chose Mary because He knew she was strong enough to carry her own cross, the cross of suffering motherhood, and be a good mother anyway.  He needed a woman “full of grace” to be an embodiment of virtue for His Son (Luke 1:28) .  As John Paul II writes in the same encyclical:

…the victory of the woman’s Son will not take place without a hard struggle, a struggle that is to extend through the whole of human history. […] Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word, is placed at the very center of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of salvation itself. In this central place, she who belongs to the “weak and poor of the Lord” bears in herself, like no other member of the human race, that “glory of grace” which the Father “has bestowed on us in his beloved Son,” and this grace determines the extraordinary greatness and beauty of her whole being. (Redemptoris Mater, 11)

Mary was asked to suffer in a way no mother ever has, with the certainty of His destruction awaiting her.  But God gives Mary grace in a way He has not given any other to help her carry this burden.  It does not make the burden lighter, nor does it make her less human.  It simply helps her resist being crushed under its weight.

Mary, Help Me Suffer Strong Like You

Although Mary was without sin, she was only human.  Unlike Christ, who was fully human and fully divine, Mary was only a woman.  This means Mary was a mom just like me: she worried about her Son, she wanted to spare Him every bad thing she could, she wanted Him to be happy, healthy, and safe.  When He experienced life’s little scrapes, she most certainly ran to scoop Him up and comfort Him the way the movie so beautifully depicts.

Mary had the heart of a human mother.  If Mary was able to be a good mom, while tasked with caring for the most important child to ever walk the earth, even while knowing He would be violently killed, then there is hope for me.

Motherhood will never be without suffering.  I will always worry that I will be unable to shield my daughter from all the dangers of this world.  But with God’s grace and through Mary’s guiding influence, I can learn to carry my own worries well and succeed in being a strong mother in the face of fear.