“Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother…” “…immediately blood and water flowed out.”
— John 19:25-34
How astonishing that the Mother of the Church is not first pictured speaking, preaching, organizing, or even understanding—but simply standing. The world thinks standing is the smallest of actions; yet at Calvary it becomes the greatest. Mary stands where nearly everyone else has fled. She stands beneath failure, beneath scandal, beneath blood and water flowing from the side of her crucified Son.
The Fathers of the Church saw in that blood and water the birth of the Church itself: Baptism and Eucharist pouring from the wounded side of Christ like Eve from the side of sleeping Adam. And there, standing at the place where the Church is born, is its Mother.
The Gospel does not say Mary collapsed beneath the Cross. It says she stood.
2. Meditatio
I or nobody else will be standing in the Divine Mercy Chapel of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Amarillo for 7am Mass this morning. I suppose it was decided that the flowing of blood and water from Christ’s side needed to pause for the Memorial Day holiday. Yet the strange thing about grace is that it does not recognize holidays. The pierced side of Christ never closes for the weekend.
This morning I am in Graham, Texas, standing beside my daughter-in-law and three grandchildren on the first anniversary of my son’s passing from pancreatic cancer. There are griefs so large that one cannot conquer them; one can only stand beside them, like Mary beneath the Cross. And perhaps that is enough.
Shortly after writing this, I will be standing in St. Mary’s Church here in this small town parish for Mass on this Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. The blood and water will still be flowing here. Heaven has not cancelled itself.
Yesterday’s Cathedral bulletin urged us to
“…especially pray for our youth that they may be touched by the Holy Spirit, courageously proclaim the Gospel, and defend the truth with faith and conviction.”
Yet this morning I find myself wondering how the young are to learn to stand at the Cross if we adults continually teach them that Mass is negotiable whenever convenience, recreation, or a national holiday arrives.
Children learn less from what we proclaim than from where we stand.
Mary evangelized the beloved disciple not with a program, but with her presence. She remained standing where grace and suffering met. Perhaps the Church in our age does not first need more cleverness, but more people willing simply to stand faithfully where Christ is found.
3. Oratio
Mother of the Church, teach me to stand.
When grief tempts me to flee, when disappointment tempts me to bitterness, when scandal tempts me to cynicism, when loneliness tempts me to despair, keep me standing beside Your Son.
Teach me that courage is often quiet. Teach me that fidelity is holier than success. Teach me that the blood and water still flow, even when churches disappoint me and even when my own heart grows tired.
Today I especially place before You my son, my family, my grandchildren, and all mothers and fathers who stand beneath crosses they never asked to carry.
Holy Mary, Mother of the Church, do not let me wander far from the Eucharist, for it is there that I learn where to stand.
Statue of the Virgin Mary in St. Jacob church in Međugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Chesterton once understood something modern men have forgotten: the bravest soldiers are often not those charging forward, but those refusing to run away.
Mary’s heroism is profoundly domestic. She does not slay dragons with a sword; she simply refuses to abandon Love when Love appears defeated. The modern world admires motion. Heaven admires steadfastness.
Indeed, the Church herself is perpetually standing between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The Church stands in cemeteries. She stands beside hospital beds. She stands beside grieving widows and confused children and bewildered sinners. She stands because Christ once stood before Pilate and would not deny Truth.
And perhaps that is why the Mass matters so much. In every Eucharist, Heaven teaches us where to stand: beneath the Cross, beside Mary, before the pierced Heart from which the Church still flows.
The tragedy of modernity is not merely that men stop believing in God. It is that they stop standing anywhere long enough to encounter Him.
5. Actio — In Light of Laudato Si’ and Synodality
Standing awestruck before a mountain, he or she cannot separate this experience from God, and perceives that the interior awe being lived has to be entrusted to the Lord: “Mountains have heights and they are plentiful, vast, beautiful, graceful, bright and fragrant.
The Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum, released eight years after the Encyclical Laudato Si’, opens by noting that the earth – our common home that welcomes us all – is changing, with consequences spanning many sectors, such as health, work, migration and access to resources and housing. The illness of nature, Pope Francis emphasizes, is also a social problem that is intimately linked to the dignity of human life (cf. LD 3). The sixth chapter of the Exhortation, drawing on Laudato Si’, notes that faith can be an important motivator for the contemplation and care of our common home, and rejects the idea of an “autonomous, omnipotent, and limitless” human being. Rather, we are invited to reconsider matters in order to see ourselves “in a more humble and richer way” (LD 68). Indeed, “the Judeo-Christian vision of the cosmos defends the unique and central value of the human being amid the marvellous variety of God’s creatures”, but also observes that human life “is incomprehensible and unsustainable without other creatures” (LD 67).
Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si’ that “everything is connected.” Synodality begins not with committees or slogans, but with accompaniment — with standing beside one another beneath the burdens of life.
Action:
Today my action is simple: I will stand with someone.
I will resist the temptation to flee discomfort, grief, disagreement, or inconvenience. Like Mary, I will practice the ministry of presence. I will remember that communities are not built merely by announcements or celebrations, but by people willing to remain faithful in ordinary moments.
And I will pray that our parishes become places where young people see adults standing faithfully at Mass, at prayer, and at the Cross.
Mary beneath the Cross is the holiest version of “I’m Still Standing” ever lived. Not triumphant because suffering disappeared, but because love remained standing when everything else collapsed.
7. Movie Pairing 🎬
Stand By Me (1986)
True friendship is measured less by grand speeches than by who remains standing beside you when the road becomes sorrowful. Calvary is the ultimate “Stand By Me” story.
8. Poetic Verse
Mary stood where heaven bled Where fearful men had turned and fled The Church was born from opened side While Love and Sorrow unified
And still the blood and water stream Through chapel dim and parish dream The saints are simply those who stay And stand beside the Cross each day.
