Helpless
Mary picks up her fallen son in a scene from Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother’ (John 19.26,7)
Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us
Helpless, helpless, helpless… Neil Young
HOW MANY times has she been here in her heart?
How many times has she gone over in her mind the words of Simeon, the temple priest, spoken when Jesus was just forty days old: “And a sword will pierce through your soul also” (Lk 2:35)?
His Cross is her Cross, his broken body hers, his pain her pain.
How many times has she pleaded with him –
think about the danger, not to go to this year’s Passover in Jerusalem?
How many times has she pleaded with God to take away the cup? Let it pass from her son. The world is too broken. Even he can’t fix it.
Please God.
Let him go.
How many times has she bathed her child’s wounds, picked him up when he’s fallen, nursed him when he was ill, held him in her arms when he was hurting, kissed him as he was leaving?
And now, helpless, she must watch him as they beat him and nail him till he screams out, ‘Mama!’
And he falls,
crushed under the weight of that torture-to-death tree.
And she would give the world, give her life, to be able to just pick up her child once more, and wipe away the blood, and chase away the crowd, hold back his attackers, his executioners.
But all she can do is watch. She has no earthly power, let alone of the divine kind, to save.
And now. The voice.
From the Cross.
Speaking like a spear in her soul…
‘Woman, behold your son…’
Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked
And tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.
Helpless, helpless, helpless…
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 