The Passion Through the Eyes of Our Lady

A meditation on Our Lady's role during the Passion of her Son based on the writings of St Anselm, St Bernard of Clairvaux, and John Lydgate, a 15th century Benedictine monk.

From Crisis

By Casey Chalk, MA(Theol)

We need ever-fresh exhortations to reinvigorate the seriousness of Passion Week in our own hearts and minds.

How much of the Passion did Our Lady witness, and how did she understand it? It’s an important question not just because she is the mother of God but because, as our Catechism teaches, Mary is the “Church’s model of faith and charity,” and thus “she is a ‘preeminent and…wholly unique member of the Church’; indeed, she is the ‘exemplary realization’ (typus) of the Church (CCC 967).” Thus, her experience of the last moments of Christ enables us to perceive the Passion as we should see it, as the perfect and pure Church should. 

According to St. John, Jesus’ mother was at the very least present at the Crucifixion. We read: “But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25). There is a rich Catholic tradition that aims to understand what this must have been like for the mother of our Lord, including from such luminaries at St. Anselm of Canterbury, as we read in The Passion of Christ Through the Eyes of Mary, a text compiled and translated by Fr. Robert Nixon, O.S.B.

Fr. Nixon argues that it is best to appreciate this work “as an example of ‘devotional creative writing’ in which the author uses his imagination to paint a vivid image of the events surrounding Our Lord’s death.” Nevertheless, the introduction to the text from St. Anselm explains that the 11th-century saint had “prayed earnestly” with “ardent weeping and prolonged fasting,” beseeching the Virgin Mary that she would reveal to him the mysteries of the Passion. At least according to the text, Mary answered St. Anselm’s prayers, and what we have is a dialogue that in many respects adheres closely to the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ last hours.

Granted, some of the details provided in St. Anselm’s account seem too far-fetched to countenance. For example, he has Mary claiming that the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus were the very same coins that the Ishmaelites had paid to the brothers of Joseph when they sold him into slavery many hundreds of years before (as recounted in Genesis 37). Possible? Perhaps. A powerfully appropriate allusion to a similar betrayal by one’s intimate companions? Undoubtedly. But, also, a claim with no prior evidence in Holy Tradition, at least nothing of which I am aware.

According to St. Anselm, Mary also says that when Jesus was taken before King Herod Antipas (as described in Luke 23:6-12), Herod placed a crown upon our Lord’s head and pledged to grant Him a share in His royal power if He would but perform a miracle for Herod’s amusement. Given Herod’s erratic behavior when his stepdaughter Salome dances before him (cf. Mark 6: 14-29), this seems more plausible than the claim of Ishmaelite coins somehow ending up in the hands of Judas. St. Anselm reports that Mary hoped Herod’s “certain natural decency and dignity,” perhaps a reference to his desire to hear John the Baptist preach, might lead Herod to spare Jesus from His impending death, though to no avail. 

Much of the rest of the narrative tracks closely with what we find in the Passion narrative, though often with evocative imagery and descriptions that unite the Gospels with the entirety of Holy Scripture. Thus, we read that Jesus was so covered in blood, gore, and wounds that He appeared as deformed and stricken, a reference to the suffering servant of Isaiah 52 and 53. We are told that the Cross of Christ was approximately fifteen feet, which is on the taller side but still within the range given by historical scholars. She describes His body as stretched so tightly on the Cross that His bones were visible, an allusion to Psalm 22:17. 

St. Anselm’s Marian account is not the only treasure for Passion Week reflections in this little devotional book. “The Book of the Passion of Our Lord” is an anonymous medieval Latin text traditionally attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Similar to St. Anselm’s text, this account also closely follows what is described in the Gospels but with added reflections on what Jesus might have said to Mary and St. John when He declared in John 19:26-27, “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold, your mother!” Thus, we read Jesus say to St. John: “Accept My beloved Mother into your care. Care for her as if she were your very own mother, or rather, care for her, because she is My own immaculate Mother, and therefore the true Mother of God!” Though obviously extra-biblical, such a description is not unbiblical.

Finally, there is an anonymous Middle English text attributed to John Lydgate—rendered into modern English by Fr. Nixon—titled “Our Lady’s Lament,” as well as the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, a devotion that is traceable at least to the 18th century. Pope Benedict XIII in his bull Redemptoris Domini (1724) and Pope Clement XII in his bull Unigeniti Filii (1734) offered many indulgences for these prayers. 

When I was a Protestant, I would have found most of this absurd, even antithetical to the doctrine of salvation as I understood it. Certainly, I would have found texts claiming to represent Mary’s observations of the Passion as both likely fallacious and indicative of a strange over-emphasis on the mother of Jesus. Now I know better. I do not know whether Mary appeared to St. Anselm or St. Bernard—perhaps Fr. Nixon is right for us to interpret these texts merely as a creative, imaginative theological outlet for medieval mystics. However, as far as I can tell, there is nothing in these texts that is heretical.

Regardless of the origin and nature of such mystical texts, it is good to place them within the context of Passion Week, an incomparable time in the ecclesial calendar when we wrestle not only with the weakness of our own sin-tainted flesh but also with evil spiritual forces that seek to stymie the graces we hope to win for ourselves, our loved ones, and the Church. We need ever-fresh exhortations to reinvigorate the seriousness of Passion Week in our own hearts and minds, so that we might not let this opportunity, of which we have comparatively few in our short lives, be wasted because of distraction or discouragement. There seem few better ways to spend the days leading up to and including the Triduum than to welcome Mary into our moments of prayer, meditation, and fasting. May we, too, see the Passion through the eyes of Mary.