In the month of May, when the Church and the whole world sing of the joy of motherhood, let us spend some time in contemplation of our Pieta from this beautiful perspective.

I remember hearing a priest in Spain say that a mother is something so beautiful that even God wanted to have one. It is a deep and beautiful thought: God, who had everything, who was infinitely happy, didn’t have a Mother! And He wanted to give Himself one in Mary. She begot, according to the flesh, the Son of God; but it is equally true that God prepared for Himself the mother that He wanted, that the Son “conceived” his mother by shaping her according to His will.

From this perspective, we must look at the Pieta in amazement, realizing that the scene Michelangelo has sculpted in this image is the labor of Mary and Jesus. On the cross, from the open side of Christ, the Church is born. Mary’s countenance as she cradles the dead body of Jesus in her arms reminds us of the expression found in the exhausted face of a mother who has just given birth. She has suffered labor pains and the new birth brings her calmness and joy. The face of Christ, peaceful, quiet, restful, serene in its own way, is however, one of a dead man. He has died to give us life and yet He rests, knowing that death is not the end, that when He is resurrected, His sacrifice will reveal its ultimate meaning by delivering the new life of the Spirit to all who receive Him by faith.

But the Pieta also portrays the labor of Mary. Christian tradition has always linked the sufferings of the Sorrowful Mother with the birth pangs of Jesus, who, by the cross, gives birth to the new humanity. St. Alphonsus Liguori writes in The Glories of Mary: “We know that by the merit of her pains Mary contributed to our birth into the life of grace, therefore, we are children of her pain (…). And if there was some relief in that sea of bitterness the Heart of Mary felt, it was knowing that through her pains she was birthing us for eternal salvation.”

From the cross, Jesus gave us all to Mary through his words to the beloved disciple, “Behold your mother.” We must understand these words in their deepest sense: it is not only that the Lord was simply offering us His mother or that He entrusted her to John so that Mary would not be forsaken. Christ was showing to Mary and to us the deeper meaning of his suffering on the cross. It is as if He were saying, “Look at your mother, who is NOW begetting you for the supernatural life. And you, Mother, understand that this suffering is the pain of labor through which you are begetting all men. My passion is your passion. Here, alongside the cross, you are discovering your vocation as the New Eve, as the mother of all the living. Be a mother to them as you have been for me.” In this way, Jesus encourages Mary, helping her to understand that her suffering is not in vain, that it has a purpose: she suffers to give life to humanity.

In the Pieta, mothers have a beautiful model for true motherhood. They are able see Mary through a mother’s eyes and understand some of the pain she endured. They understand that children often cause suffering; not only in childbirth, but throughout life and that the crosses of their children are also their crosses, endured because of the love of a mother for her child. From Mary they must also learn that their children are firstly the children of God and that they must place them in the Lord’s hands, allowing them to embrace His divine will, even if for them it means a kind of death. So many mothers suffer because of their children for so many reasons! The contemplation of the Pieta gives them comfort because they know that Mary understands and that if she did not despair in her pain, they, too, can look to the future with hope.

Let us give thanks to Mary for her generosity, for her acceptance of great suffering to give us the life of grace. Let us imitate her in her complete surrender to the will of God, and as the beloved disciple did, let us embrace her as our Mother, loving her gently and intensely.

We are reflecting on the Pieta here at the school of Mary, with the intention of learning how to be faithful to our Christian vocation. In the previous reflections, we meditated on the Sorrowful Mother as a source of inspiration for all women, especially those mothers who are suffering. Today we contemplate Mary to understand the most important lesson of our lives: the ultimate meaning of suffering.

In the Pieta Jesus and Mary reveal in their faces and in their bodies, the suffering they endured for our redemption. In Jesus, that pain is over. In Mary, the suffering remains in her most pure heart just as the aged Simeon had predicted: “ a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” (Luke 2:35).  Long gone are those happy days of Jesus’ childhood! The young Son full of life and strength that she had held in her arms now lies lifeless and helpless on her lap in the cold grip of death.

Michelangelo’s sculpture reminds us that suffering is part of our lives. When we are young, pain – especially physical pain – is a foreign concept, something we have been told about, but that has nothing to do with us, a strange country we will never explore. Adults, on the other hand, know what it means to slowly decline, to feel energy decrease while infirmities increase. Death, rather than being something that happens once at the end of our journey on earth, is experienced as a process of weakening and continuous wear. We don’t die, but rather we are dying, slowly, every day.

The fundamental issue for the human person is to find meaning in his suffering. It is not suffering itself that is the worst thing, not understanding why we are suffering is far worse. I recall the insights of Viktor Frankl, a Austrian Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist, a Nazi Holocaust survivor and the founder of logotherapy. Dr. Frankl states that the fundamental task of man on earth is to find sense and meaning to life as a whole, but especially when we suffer trials and any form of pain. In his most famous work, Man’s Search for Meaning, he reports his discovery in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II:

“We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor’s arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: “If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.’

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which Man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of Man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when Man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position Man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.’”

In the Pieta, Mary gazes on her Beloved, whom she loves with all her heart, and knows that their salvation is in love. She knows that the love of her Son will conquer death, and that her suffering gives meaning to her pain. Only the love of God surpasses and overcomes any difficulty. The Pieta reflects the struggle being waged in the soul of Mary between the excruciating pain of the loss of her Son Jesus and the expectation that  God will dispel the darkness and return the joy that she seems to have lost forever. The face of Mary in the Pieta is not the face of one who has been defeated by despair and pain, but of one who knows in Whom she puts her trust.

Mary teaches us to give our love to the One who never fails. She teaches us to suffer with hope and not be discouraged by the setbacks in life. She reminds us our need to have our suffering make sense so that we can find peace and joy. She teaches us to unite our sufferings to the suffering of Jesus so that Christ Himself will one day transfigure us in a joy that will have no end.

Mother, teach us to suffer like you. Teach us to love while we are suffering. Teach us to offer our crosses for the salvation of the world. Help us to be like you.

Mary is for everyone, the model of Christian life. She was Jesus’ best disciple. Mary, who accompanied her Son all the way to Calvary and who, with her attitude of internal recollection and humble listening, always knew how to allow herself to be led by God as a pilgrim of faith.

The image of the Pieta invites all who gaze at it to ponder the serene and beautiful face of Mary. This is a sculpture that speaks in silence. The most obvious characteristic and, maybe for that reason the most forgotten one when thinking of Mary, is her womanhood.

Within the first pages of the Sacred Scripture, Eve, mother of all the living, took the forbidden fruit from the tree. In doing so, she closed the door for herself and all her descendants to the place God had created for the happiness of all his children.  Michelangelo’s sculpture seems to have as a backdrop those first pages of the Bible. Mary at the foot of the cross is the New Eve who picks a better fruit from a better tree. Jesus, on Mary’s lap, is the fruit that does not bring death to those who receive it, but life without end. The actions of Eve and Mary are contrary to one another: the first wanted to “be like God” through disobedience, taking the fruit almost by stealing it.  Mary, on the other hand, didn’t take, but instead receives her dead Son and does so as “handmaid of the Lord”, trusting in her God until the end. She understood that the road to true Life does not allow shortcuts.

 I firmly believe that Michelangelo’s Pieta speaks in a special way to women and their unique sensibility. As St. John Paul II has written, “a woman cannot find herself if it is not in giving love to others”. The Pieta reminds women that their strength always lies within a love that is capable of suffering, of giving without limits, of resisting until the end. From the Pieta emerges a model of  womanhood: serene, strong, beautiful, pure, loyal and wholly feminine.

Throughout the Gospel we see in Mary profoundly feminine traits. We could say that standing at the foot of the cross, she is more woman than ever: she is, in fact, the new woman who, like Eve, is born from the open side of man. May she teach all women to nourish their feminine genius, to guard it with delicacy in their hearts, and to use it to enlighten society, our communities and families, and the entire world.

I write these lines sitting in silence, contemplating the image of our Pieta. Only a short distance from me, Michelangelo’s sculpture quietly transports me to another world, to  another time. It is a strange feeling: I am here, in our beloved parish, but gazing on sorrowful Mary takes me to a different place…takes me to the beginning of this story of admirable love, the cave in Bethlehem, where her son Jesus was born to save us.

It is hard not to see in this sculpture a veiled reference to the mystery of Christmas. The position of Jesus and Mary without a doubt evokes that of a mother holding her newborn baby in her arms.

During the time of Advent or Christmas, I would like to invite you to imagine the following scene: instead of the lifeless body of Christ in the original sculpture, make an effort to substitute Baby Jesus in your imagination. Suddenly, everything seems to make more sense: the youthfulness of our Lady, the position of her body, her facial expression – it all seems to fit in better into the scene of the Nativity than at the Crucifixion. Not only Mary’s expression is maternal, but  her entire demeanor is that of a woman who has just given birth. We can see her sitting, rocking her baby, singing a lullaby to soothe him, or even feeding him from her own breast.

Sometimes I’ve asked myself if Michelangelo may have been really thinking more about Bethlehem than Calvary when he sculpted his magnificent piece. And I ask myself: could it be that the artist deliberately intended to evoke the Nativity scene in the sculpture of the Pieta? To me it makes sense to think that the sculptor genius tried to imply- by the way he placed the bodies of the lifeless Christ and sorrowful Mary- an intrinsic, theological relationship, between the scenes of the manger and of the cross.

Actually, Christmas and Passion are, somehow, the same event with identical players, though lived or split into two distinct moments: in fact, the recumbent body of Christ is the same that was embraced by Mary in the grotto of Bethlehem. The man resting serenely, in the arms of the Virgin, is the same man who in the Nativity scene slept  peacefully to the lullabies of the Mother of God.

Between these two events, the life of the Son of God on Earth took place. According to the Prologue of the Gospel of John, “He came to his own, and his own received him not.” (Jn 1, 11) and this is applied with the same forcefulness in both the mystery of Christmas and the Passion of Christ.

Each event highlights the other. The saints have always seen in Bethlehem the beginning of the suffering of Jesus and Mary for our salvation. They have seen the offering of Jesus for the redemption of the world. They have seen the love of God the Father in the salvation of fallen humanity. St. Alphonsus Liguori, for example, expresses himself this way: “This is how He presented Himself before the Father, when He came to this world, from the beginning of this life; He presented Himself as the prisoner and debtor of all our sins, and as such He was condemned and cursed and turned unto death on a cross. Oh God, if the Eternal Father could have had pain, what sorrow would He have experienced from watching His beloved son, His innocent son, worthy of all His love, forced to be treated as a criminal, as the most evil criminal in the world. ‘Behold the man’, said Pilate when he showed Him to the Jews, scourged, so they would have compassion, as he saw this innocent man mistreated. ‘Behold the man’, it seems the Eternal Father is saying to us while showing us His Son in the cave of Bethlehem. Know that this poor babe you see here, oh, men!, placed in a manger of animals and laying on hay, is my dear Son who has come to take away your sins and your pain; love Him, then, for He is very worthy of your love”.

As we contemplate the Baby and His Mother in Bethlehem, let us reflect on the love behind this scene, thanking them for all they have endured for our salvation. Let us make up our minds to answer generously to God with love for all the love He has given us.

In our preceding meditations, we have reflected on somewhat superficial considerations: we have paid more attention to the technical or historical aspects of the Pieta rather than to the contemplation of the message that the image brings to us. From now on, we want to observe the Pieta with a simple, contemplative, humble gaze, and let it speak to us and teach us.

We have not wanted to bring this sculpture to St. Anne, to Gilbert, Arizona, simply because of its artistic value or its external beauty. As a priest, my main intention has been to honor Mary and to offer to our community an opportunity to learn of Jesus “at the school of Mary”, as Pope John Paul II beautifully describes it.

I am convinced that the Pieta is an authentic “school” at which we can learn some of the most important lessons of our Christian life. When I pray in our church, I stop and look at the Pieta and I am surprised at how frequently its contemplation suggests new ideas, new lessons, new shades of meaning that were previously unnoticed.

Perhaps to have the image of the Pieta at Saint Anne teaches to us to be contemplative. In order to learn to contemplate it is necessary to know how to slow down, to observe without haste, to be silent, to reflect slowly.

I believe that Michelangelo has been able to sculpt Mary in such a way that she appears before our eyes as an authentic teacher: her calm face, her body seated – a common position from which a teacher, from his chair, taught his disciples. Her open arms express meaning; her serene glance encourages us to approach her to learn. Everything she has to “teach” lies in her motherly lap: she watches, loves and offers her Son, Jesus to us.

To have the Pieta in our parish would remind us that Mary is the Teacher of our Christian life. We will not ever be able to reach sanctity if we do not go to the School of our Mother. She continues to watch her Son – whether it be in Cana or at Calvary- and inviting us to do what He tells us.

My experience as priest assures me that the soul that loves Mary always lives near Jesus. Saint Bernard said of Mary, numquam satis, never enough. It is also said that the servant of Mary will never perish (servus Mariae numquam peribit).

God willing, Michelangelo’s masterpiece will awaken in all of us love for our Mother.  May she give all of us the opportunity to gaze slowly. May she soften our hearts if they have become hardened. May she melt us if our souls are frozen. May she show us the path that leads us to her Son, Jesus. If the Pieta achieves even some of this, all the hard work to bring her to Saint Anne will have been worth the effort.

If we look closely, Michelangelo’s Pieta seems to awaken in us an awareness of immortality: a desire, which is always felt, always longed for, to live beyond these heavens and this passing earth. Certainly love is the experience that brings us closest to this thirst for eternity.  It has been said that loving another person means saying to them: “to me, you will not die”.  Love asks for eternity, otherwise it is not true love.

Art has also been a sublime way in which man has sought immortality. Mankind has always been very aware that this life passes “like a breath” as we read in Psalm 144. From that realization comes the overwhelming desire to create works that will remain here once we are gone. Ars longa, vita brevis: art endures, but life is brief.

Clearly the artist seeks this type of recognition that lives on after the days of his own existence. It isn’t bad -on the contrary! To desire the palm of victory, when it is sought within the service of an ideal, is worth spending one’s life on. That desire is a kind of echo that opens us up to an eternity prepared by God for those who love Him.

In the case of Michelangelo, his goal was not so much to seek human glory as to seek the divine; not the crown that fades, but the one that never fades. The proof of this is in the fact that for 17 years he worked untiringly on the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica without accepting any reward, offering everything -as he used to say- “for God and for the salvation of my soul”.

In the very image of the Pieta, the evocation of immortality is reflected in the youth of Mary and Jesus. On their faces we see no traces of the passage of time. The mark of the years hasn’t touched Mother Mary’s fresh face or the face of our Savior lying lifeless on her lap.

As a matter of fact, the Virgin is surprisingly young. She almost looks younger than her own son! Contemplating the Pieta may evoke in us, if we are older, a time in our life that has already passed….but at the same time, points to the future of a life, beyond the confines of this temporary world, in which we will be, just as Mary and Jesus, glorious in heaven already – and whose youth in the Pieta points to the brilliance of the Resurrection- eternally young and immortal.

It seems that the image itself shows us the way to that immortality: to gain the “eternal youth” of heaven, there is no other way than the redeeming cross, the passion alongside Christ who dies for us, in the arms of Mary.

May She help us be closer to her Son now, so that we may someday obtain that place where there will no longer be tears, or grief, or death or pain. It is worth living for that.

In our last reflection about Michelangelo’s Pieta, we were meditating about beauty as a goal in Christian life. It is significant that in biblical Greek the word to describe goodness, just as St. John uses it in Chapter 10 of his Gospel when he speaks of “The Good Shepherd” who gives his life for his sheep, is the word kalos which means beautiful. In the preceding example, where we usually translate “good shepherd”, we could very well say “beautiful shepherd”. Certainly there is no greater beauty than holiness as a reflection of God’s own goodness.

Beauty in art has always been an inescapable way to approach the contemplation of the mystery of God. This is what used to be called in Latin via pulchritudinis, the way of beauty. In a world where so many people are disoriented and lost, longing to bring beauty into their gray and desolate lives, art is a way of bringing them closer, without their realization, to the Lord from whom the beauty of all creation comes.

I am aware that when it comes to art there is an open and interesting discussion between the most practical and those whom we could call  “lovers of good taste”. Art has never been cheap.  We are endeavoring to keep in our parish one of the few replicas of Michelangelo’s Pieta. This effort could be seen as a squandering or a waste of money. Do we really need to find money for a statue? Isn’t it even sinful to spend such a large amount of money on an image when that money could be used for other more pressing needs?

I would like offer here the words of St John Paul II, wherein he presents a point of view that we can’t lose perspective on when it comes to the decoration of the spaces where the Holy Sacrifice of Mass is celebrated. It is worth taking the time to read it carefully:

“Reading the account of the institution of the Eucharist in the Synoptic Gospels, we are struck by the simplicity and the “solemnity” with which Jesus, on the evening of the Last Supper, instituted this great sacrament. There is an episode that in some way serves as its prelude: the anointing at Bethany. A woman, whom John identifies as Mary the sister of Lazarus, pours a flask of costly ointment over Jesus’ head, which provokes from the disciples – and from Judas in particular (cf. Mt 26:8; Mk 14:4;Jn 12:4) – an indignant response, as if this act, in light of the needs of the poor, represented an intolerable “waste”. But Jesus’ own reaction is completely different. While in no way detracting from the duty of charity towards the needy, for whom the disciples must always show special care – “the poor you will always have with you” (Mt 26, 11; Mk 14:7; cf. Jn 12:8) – he looks towards his imminent death and burial, and sees this act of anointing as an anticipation of the honor which his body will continue to merit even after his death, indissolubly bound as it is to the mystery of his person.

Like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no “extravagance”, devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist. No less than the first disciples charged with preparing the “large upper room”, she has felt the need, down the centuries and in her encounters with different cultures, to celebrate the Eucharist in a setting worthy of so great a mystery.

With this heightened sense of mystery, we understand how the faith of the Church in the mystery of the Eucharist has found historical expression not only in the demand for an interior disposition of devotion, but also in outward forms meant to evoke and emphasize the grandeur of the event being celebrated.

Similarly, can we overlook the enormous quantity of artistic production, ranging from fine craftsmanship to authentic works of art, in the area of Church furnishings and vestments used for the celebration of the Eucharist?

It can be said that the Eucharist, while shaping the Church and her spirituality, has also powerfully affected “culture”, and the arts in particular.

Within this context of an art aimed at expressing, in all its elements, the meaning of the Eucharist in accordance with the Church’s teaching, attention needs to be given to the norms regulating the construction and decor of sacred buildings. As history shows and as I emphasized in my Letter to Artists, the Church has always left ample room for the creativity of artists. But sacred art must be outstanding for its ability to express adequately the mystery grasped in the fullness of the Church’s faith and in accordance with the pastoral guidelines appropriately laid down by competent Authority. This holds true both for the figurative arts and for sacred music.”   

-Ecclesia De Eucharistia, Chapter 5

I think it is worth the effort we are making to keep the Pieta in our beloved parish of St. Anne. If we are able to do so, one day its beauty will attract your children and future generations to come, to discover, to sense, the Mystery, our God, who is found in the grandeur, the beauty and the goodness of creation.