The Last Words of Jesus - Part V

by Thomas Sitio of Jesus (Gene Boehmann)

Meditation on the Third Word

"Standing at the cross of Jesus was his mother.

"Woman behold your son, son behold your mother."
"Mulier, ecce filius tuus, ecce mater tua."

"What hand but yours drew me out from my mother’s womb? Who else was my refuge when I hung at her breast?
From the hour of my birth you were my guardian, since I left my mother’s womb, you are my God." Ps 22

"All you who pass by here,  look and see! Is there any suffering like my suffering?" Lamentations

Isaiah foresaw his birth: he foresaw his life: he foresaw his death as Suffering Servant:

Isaiah closed his prophecy with a promise of comfort and consolation to Israel. Jesus closes his life with the same promise to his flock. Jesus looked down and beheld the suffering, sorrow, the tears, the sore distress of his mother and his beloved disciple. Like Isaiah seeing the travail of Jerusalem, he consoled them:

"Lovers of Jerusalem, rejoice with her, be glad for her sake; make holiday with her, you that mourned for her. So shall you be her foster children, suckled plentifully with her consolations, drinking in to your heart’s content, the glory that is here. Peace shall flow through her like a river....This shall be the milk you drink, like children carried at the breast, fondled on a mother’s lap. I will console you then, like a mother caressing her son." Isaiah 66:10-13

"Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted...." Matthew 9:5

"In her was restored what had been lost in Paradise – that noble image which the Father had fashioned after His likeness, and which was destroyed by sin. She has, together with the Father, given new life to all members of the Mystical Body, by guiding them back to their origin." Johannes Tauler, Sermon on the Feast of the Nativity of our Lady

"On the coming Solemnity of Christmas, I will not fail to ask the sovereign Divine Infant to renew in your spirit at every moment that mystical divine nativity, so that your spirit may be reborn at every moment to a new life that is divine and holy. This sacred mystical divine nativity is celebrated every day in the deepest interior solitude. In this sacred desert, in profound separation and detachment from every created thing, in total nudity and poverty of spirit, and in a sacred silence of faith and love, the human soul is reborn in the divine humanized Word to a new life that is entirely holy and divine." St. Paul of the Cross to Mother Mary Crucified, Vol II, 310.

Continued in subsequent Oblate Sharings