The Mother Who Entombed Her Child
I was probably too easy on the Netflix film Mary in my review last month, but the film does have its moments. When the Mother of God presents the baby Jesus in the Temple, Simeon the Devout prophesies as found in the Bible:
“And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother […] Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” (KJV, Luke 2:34–35)
It’s a moving moment in scripture and on the screen, for it foreshadows the Crucifixion. According to the Gospels, Mary was there watching her son suffer, and according to tradition she was there when they took his mutilated body, as dead as dead can be, down from the Cross.
Many an artist has portrayed this scene. Mary’s grief is often visible, as in Italian painter Pietro Lorenzetti’s Deposition of Christ from the Cross, found in the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi. In detail, Mary’s anguish is intense:
Art doesn’t always make Mary’s grief plain in her features, but do we need to see it to know it’s there? A friend once said that seeing her son off for his first day of school was like having her heart outside her body, exposed to the cruel world.
Oh, how Mary must have suffered.
