Stabat Mater

The way it goes at this point in my life, about half of my Catholic friends are so from birth and the other half are converts. I often find that the converts have an edge; they had to think their way into the faith. They also often bring something into their spirituality that cradle Catholics miss, like the Protestant non-formulaic, heartfelt prayer. I, baptized at age two weeks, often admire converts, because I doubt I would have had the wherewithal to join the Church if I hadn’t been raised in it. In fact, at a young age I remember wondering if I should leave the faith and then come back so that we could have some rejoicing in heaven for that one sinner returning. All that said, there are some places where I believe cradle Catholics have an edge, one of them being having an understanding of symbolism and liturgical continuity in repetition. By this I mean that cradle Catholics have seen the same cycle of liturgy for so many times that they attach years worth of significance to a certain devotion or song.

In keeping with this, hearing Stabat Mater, specifically at Stations of the Cross, brings a great weight of emotion and thought to me. It draws me to all the scenes in my life which resemble it: seeing the candles flicker on dark evenings, wooden carvings of Jesus and the Romans, my mother’s sorrowful face, the sober face of my father, the slow praying of the priest and the people: “I love You, Jesus, my love, I love you with my whole heart; I repent of ever having offended You. Never permit me to separate myself from You again. Grant that I may love You always; and then do with me as You will.”

So many images arrange themselves mosaically in my mind, so that praying the stations makes me feel like I am along with Our Lady and St. John as they follow Jesus on His way to Calvary. This is something very necessary if we want to have a deep relationship with Him; we can’t really know Him unless we think about how much He suffered for us.

Meditating on the Passion at the Stations of the Cross helps to understand how much He came down to our level. There is no struggle in our lives which isn’t in some way already caught up in His struggle. If we’ve been insulted, He understands it; He was insulted by the people He loved so much. If we’ve been humiliated, He understands; He was stripped in front of a crowd. If we’ve been stabbed in the back by our friends when we needed them most, He understands; the apostles slept when He needed them most and denied knowing Him when the going got rough.

How can we understand Jesus’ love without following Him in the way of the cross? He speaks about how much He loves us in His sermons and parables, but He makes good on it, proves it on the road to Golgotha.

At each of the stations, we can grow profoundly closer to Jesus. St. Teresa of Calcutta read Psalm 68—“I looked for someone to comfort me, but found no one”—and wrote next to it, “Be that person!” Pope Pius XI once said, “If, because of our future sins, the soul of Christ became sorrowful to the point of death, there is no doubt that from that moment on it receives some consolation from our acts of reparation. So that we can and should, even now, console the Sacred Heart.” Thus, we also can see ourselves in Simon of Cyrene or Veronica, helping Him to carry the cross and wiping the blood from His face, and console Jesus retroactively.

In His meeting with the weeping women of Jerusalem we can see how much he cares for mothers and their children. Although he was exhausted, weak from blood loss, and out of breath from climbing Mt. Calvary, He still used what breath He had to warn the women for their children. Having spent Himself just to speak to them, the next station is His third fall. 

Just like this, we can grow closer to Jesus by meditating on His great sign of love.