THUS hE DESPAIRED:

As Jesus looked down from the cross, so close to three o'clock on a Friday afternoon, he saw his "mother, with her sister, Mary wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala." Next to the three Marys stood "the disciple whom he loved," St. John. For nearly four decades, this scene has haunted me. As Catholics, we focus so much on Jesus's physical suffering on the cross, the pain his mother must have felt, and the forthcoming death and resurrection that we often readily and understandably skip a person who is vital--actually, fundamentally and profoundly critical--to the entire story: St. John. Tradition tells us that John was the youngest, that he was the last to write his Gospel, and that he was the only apostle not to have been brutally martyred. At the moment that Jesus looked down from the Cross, He gave His mother to John, asking him and his house to shelter her. "'There is your mother'; and from that moment the disciple took her into his home." While I have often wondered what St. John must have felt--the pain and the anguish--at seeing his savior crucified, I have wondered far more often what Jesus must have felt, especially given that He was fully man as well as fully God. No doubt, it meant a great deal to Him to have the four by his side in His greatest moment of agony. All to the good.

But, as a man, what must He have thought knowing that all eleven of His closest male friends had betrayed Him, deserted Him in His hour of greatest need? Judas the worst, to be sure, but even Peter had denied Him three times, and not a single one of them dared suffer with Him or even next to Him that Friday afternoon. Only John. Might this not have been a blow as great as any dealt to Him in his entire thirty-three years of Incarnate life on this world of sorrows? Though I have no idea, perhaps these betrayals were the greatest blow to Jesus. It's possible I'm projecting too much of myself on the situation, but given that Jesus already knew what God the Father's response would be, how the people would (pen)ultimately view him, and the fortitude of His mother He had come to cherish, the only real unknown in the entire Passion was the response of His closest friends.

Tweet   @brothersjudd