Walking the Via Dolorosa with Mary

I've been thinking about a classmate's observation about the character of Mary as portrayed in Mel Gibson's movie, 'The Passion of Christ". My classmate noted that his observation that "the mother can endure and nearly be indifferent to so much suffering also" was a bit unnerving. It made me pause because I didn't seen her in the this way when I watched the movie.

My husband and I discussed that, for both of us, the scene where Mary follows her son down the "Via Dolorosa"... shocked and helpless to do anything to stop what she is witnessing... with Satan matching her, step for step on the other side of the street... is the ONLY part of the movie that we resonate with.

It's how it has often been for us with our oldest son, as we watched him carry his own crosses, carefully crafted by his abusive birth parents, weighed down by his mental illnesses, sometimes driven by evil to act out and sabotage his future... all the while, we're anything BUT indifferent to his suffering. And equally helpless to stop what we are witnessing.

The movie came out shortly after our son had to be removed from our home to protect our other children. He refused the treatment that would have allowed him to stay in the home. Helpless to stop him from decisions that led to his placement in a juvenile detention setting, we grieved our powerlessness.

I cried through that whole scene, and it had nothing to do with the bloodied Jesus-- I was already numb to that thanks to Mel's violence. It was Mary I cried with, and myself I cried for.

As a Protestant, I have grown up keeping a "healthy distance" from the mother of Christ. Now that I am a mother, I find her quite comforting to have around from time to time.