Stabat Mater again

Today the worldwide Sacred Heart family - and especially its schools - celebrates Mater Admirabilis, our image of Mary as a serene and reflective young woman. In her quietly smiling stillness, and her image's calm spaciousness, she seems a million years and a million miles away from the terror, destruction and humanitarian crises currently besetting her native land. And yet, as with her Son, and Joseph, Mary Magdalene, Peter, John and Jesus' other disciples, this battered, bloody land, which we call holy, was a land she called home.

Two years ago on this feast, and in a time marked by violence, I was moved to write about the hymn Stabat Mater... At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last... And having revisited that reflection I can only share its message again; a message which is, sadly, even more fitting for now... 

And so today I look at this rosy young woman, and wonder what she can say to me - to us - about all the violence and hatred in our world, and in her native land, which seem to inhabit a different realm to her tranquility. 

And the rosy girl reminded me that Mater Admirabilis is one and the same as the older, wiser woman who, more than thirty years later became the Mater we invoke in the Stabat Mater. A mother who stood, with courage and dignity, as life seeped from her brutalised Son, accepting a new mission and motherhood from him. A mother, matured by prayer and pain who still keeps her station - still stands, sits, kneels, crouches and lies - with all those who suffer due to violence, prejudice and hate. 

Who will we ask her to stand or sit with today...?