MARY AND JOHN

On the cross we no longer have Christ and his Mother, or Jesus and Mary. I know we speak of the sorrowful Mother at the foot of the cross, but I don't think she was sorrowful, I think she was suffering. I cannot imagine the mother of the Maccabees as being sorrowful when she sent her seven sons to death. There must have been a certain joy in the mother's heart as she gives her son. But there's something different here. At this moment on the cross we no longer have Jesus and Mary. We have the new Adam and the new Eve. Our Lord on the cross is the new Adam, the Blessed Mother at the foot of the cross is the new Eve.   And we're going to have the consummation of a marriage, and out of the consummated marriage of the new Adam and the new Eve is going to begin the new Church of which John will be the symbol. And so the new Adam looking down now to the woman, says: 'Woman, your son.' And to the son, he did not say 'John' (he would have then been only the son of Zebedee), but 'Son, your mother.' Here is the begetting of a new life. The Blessed Mother becomes the symbol of the Church. And as Eve was the mother of the living, so Mary becomes the Mother of the new living in the order of grace.