Preview: Christ Our Friend's Last Word to His Mother and John the Beloved

Next in our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten Series, on Monday, March 9, Anna or Matt and I will discuss Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the next of the Seven Last Words of Christ: “Jesus, then, seeing his Mother and the disciple he loved, said to his Mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘This is your Mother.’ And from that moment the disciple took her with him.” (John: 19: 26-27)

Benson mentioned Mary and John standing at the foot of the Cross in the meditation on Jesus's Last Word to the Good Thief and he continues that reflection:

Two of the personages standing beside the Cross are, for all Christians, for all time, the supreme types of Divine and human love. There is Mary, loved into immaculate being by the Eternal Father, the Mother Herself of Immaculate Love, and John the chosen disciple, allowed to rest his head, even before he had attained heaven, upon the breast of that same Immaculate Love. Surely these two, Mary and John, are already as wholly one as Love can make them. Those who love God so perfectly cannot love one another less perfectly.

Yet Jesus, in His seven words upon the Cross, devotes one to make them closer still.

Jesus, Our Friend, wants us to be friends with others too and with this Last Word He "unite[s] these friends in divine charity to one another" to demonstrate what He desires among His followers:

"He that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"{1} "As long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me."{2} The second commandment is like "unto the first": "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."{3}{4}

Benson's meditation on how we in society form these friendships to love our neighbor as ourself, forming communities of cooperation by submitting ourselves to the good of all, posits that this is usually in the pursuit of rejoicing and prosperity, alleviating poverty and sorrow. 

BUT:

. . . Jesus Christ does something that has never been done before. He uses suffering as the supreme bond of love. "Love one another," He cries from the Cross, "because you are strong enough to suffer together." "Mother," cries the dying Friend of us all, "behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

This word, then, is no less significant of an immense spiritual principle than are the rest. Mary and John have loved one another perfectly -- as perfectly, that is to say, as a common joy has made possible. Together they have watched His triumph: Mary has seen Him, the Child of Joy, upon her breast: John upon His breast has seen Him rejoice in spirit. But, from to-day onwards, their common love rises to yet greater heights: they love one another now, not merely in the Sacred Heart, but in the pierced and broken Sacred Heart. Hitherto they have been perfect friends; henceforth they are Blood-relations -- relations in a blood more intimate to them than their own -- a Blood shed for the remission of sins. It is not, "Friend, behold thy friend"; but, "Mother, behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

Benson meditates further on our friendship with the Mother of God, noting that it is through her Sorrows as much as it is through her Joys; that the Sorrows are really the stronger bonds:

First, then, this is the bond which unites Mary to ourselves -- not that she sang the Magnificat, but that the sword pierced her own heart also. Sorrow, wrongly received, is a mightier force than all ordinary human affections: sorrow, borne with resentment and bitterness, isolates the soul not only from God but from her own fellows. The wounded stag creeps away to die in loneliness. But, on the other hand, if sorrow is welcomed and taken in, if it is made, by the very effort which welcomes it, a bond of union with others that suffer, a link is forged which all the powers of hell cannot break. If Mary had been given us as our Mother in Bethlehem, if she had wrapped herself in her unique joy, if she had been to us but a figure of incarnate bliss; then when the horror of darkness fell upon us, we too should have crept away from even Her, to suffer in loneliness. A religion that presented to us Mary with her living child in her arms, and had no Mary with her dead Son across her knees, could not have been the religion to which we should turn in utter confidence when all else had failed. . . .

Indeed she is the Mother of the redeemed, because she was the Mother of Redemption: she stood by the Cross of Jesus, as she had knelt by His cradle; and she is our Mother, then, by that very blood by which both she and we are alike redeemed. The "Mother of Sorrows" must always be nearer to the human race than even the "Cause of our Joy."

Benson's spiritual advice is first, to make sure that our religious duties do not separate us from our friends:

It is an appalling fact that again and again those who claim to be enjoying the most intimate friendship with God are distinguished by selfishness and a lack of charity towards their neighbours -- that it is those, again and again, above all others who live what are called "misunderstood" lives, who actually advance their "Rule of Life" or the calls of their devotion as arguments against their having time or energy to be kind to their servants or acquaintances. "She is at her prayers, therefore she must not be disturbed. He is getting ready for the sacraments; therefore it is natural that he should be a little peevish and preoccupied.". . .

Then, he gives some practical direction:

Go home, then, and make up that foolish quarrel once and for all: go home and apologize simply and sincerely for your share in that trouble in which perhaps the other was even more to blame than yourself. It is intolerable that the friends of the Crucified -- that those even who aspire to be friends of the Crucified -- should think it conceivable to be at peace with God, who are not at peace with wife or husband or parents.

"Behold your Mother . . . your son!" That soul with whom you are at variance has a bond with you far greater than that of a common creation. The fact that the Eternal Word died for you both upon the Cross is an infinitely stronger link of union than the fact that the Eternal Word willed you both into being. For while the Fall broke the harmony of creation, the Redemption restored it; and this restoration is a far greater marvel than even Creation itself.

No man can be a Friend of Jesus Christ who is not a friend to his neighbour.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Saint John the Beloved Apostle, pray for us! 

Postscript: My best friend and I read an Easter book last year (The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith by Georges Chevrot) in which the author comments on Saint John's faith in the Resurrection at the empty tomb as an immediate result of this close relationship between Mary and John: "The crucified Lord had also asked Mary to look on John as her son and had entrusted his holy mother to him. Did Mary and John merely weep and pray together from Friday evening until Sunday morning, without exchanging any conversation?"

Chevrot doesn't think so and suggests that Mary had "been guiding the apostle's faith toward the reality what was to come . . ." reminding John "of the assurance of resurrection that her Son had given them . . . ("Peter and John at the Tomb" p. 30).

 

It is certainly the hope of the Resurrection of the Dead we share as we grieve for friends and family: I'll be attending the Funeral Mass for a good friend Monday morning, and heard this week of the death of a high school and classmate's mother. May Constance and Kay rest in the peace of Christ in hope of the Resurrection!

Image credit (both public domain): "What Jesus Saw from the Cross" by James Tissot and Crucifixion Brazil, 19th century

Another Book on Catholic Converts in the Twentieth Century!

Stopping into Eighth Day Books to buy our next Chesterton group book (The Ball and the Cross) yesterday, I happened to see another book, and another, and another, since it is a bookstore. The particular book I saw and picked up and scanned, was Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century by Melanie McDonagh from Yale University Press:

Why did Catholicism attract so many unlikely converts in Britain during the twentieth century?

The twentieth century is understood as an era of growing, inexorable secularism, yet in Britain between the 1890s and the 1960s there was a marked turn to Rome. In the first half of the century, Catholicism became an intellectual and spiritual fashion attracting more than half a million converts, including fascinating artists, writers, and thinkers. What drew these men and women to join the church, and what difference did conversion make to them?

Melanie McDonagh examines the lives of these notable converts from the perspective of their faith. For the Decadent circle of Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde—who converted on his deathbed—artists such as Gwen John and David Jones, the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, and novelists including G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Muriel Spark, Catholicism offered stability in increasingly febrile times. McDonagh explores their lives and influences, the reaction to their conversions, and the priests who initiated them into their faith.

There are 24 chapters, and the author recounts Saint John Henry Newman's story and influence in chapter eight. Here's an interview with the author.  

As I browsed through the book I noticed this name: Gwen John (Chapter 6), an artist who, like Camille Claudel, had a relationship with Auguste Rodin. Here's an article from The Catholic Herald by Melanie McDonagh, who also writes for The Spectator and other papers in England, about an exhibit of John's works in Cardiff:

Gwen John converted to Catholicism around 1913 and it had a profound effect on her art. The new exhibition on the artist, which opens in Cardiff, is striking in that it places the religious aspect of her work where it belongs, at the centre of her art and her vision of the world. In one way that isn’t surprising, for among her best known works is the series of Dominican nuns from the convent of Meudon, culminating in the wonderful images of their founder, Mère Poussepin, taken from a prayer card. But it can’t always be taken for granted that contemporary curators will be unabashed by religion (I remember a collection of David Jones paintings presented without reference to their religious aspect), so it is rather wonderful that the curators of this excellent show, Lucy Wood and Fiona McLees, give Gwen John’s faith the significance she gave it. . . .

More about the exhibition here. 

Did I buy the book? No. Do I want to read the book? Yes. 

Two copies are still available at Eighth Day Books! It would interesting to compare and contrast McDonagh's take with Patrick Allitt's!

I did buy another book, however: What I Saw in America by G.K. Chesterton (one of McDonagh's converts!), brand new from the American Chesterton Society!

Image credit (Public Domain): Gwen John - Self-Portrait