Ave Maria Meditations
Jesus has fallen…Jesus is on His feet again, the Cross is put back on His shoulder, once more He starts on His way. As He lifts His bowed head and looks at the road He is to tread, He comes face-to-face with His Mother
It is not by chance that she meets Him at this moment, just as He falls and struggles to His feet again. She sees that which no one else in that crowd sees: the tiny Child taking His first unsteady steps and falling on the garden path in Nazareth. She is there beside Him, holding her breath, longing to put out her hands to hold Him, to prevent the fall, but she lets Him go alone, the little Child whose independence she must respect, her Son who must learn to walk on His own feet, and to walk away from her.
Seeing the first fall on the Via Crucis, His mother sees the first fall on the path in Nazareth. Now as then she is silent; she holds back her hands as she did then. His will is her well. It was for this hour that she gave Him to the world, for this that He grew from the infant to the child, from the child to the man.
He goes on his way. He passes her by. This is something at the very heart of His suffering; that it must afflict her whom He loves; that because they both love, neither could spare the other. He goes on his way to do his Father’s will…Christ is given to save the world. Mary has given Him the Precious Blood that is to be shed.
From the Way of the Cross by +Carol Houselander
