Mary, Mother of Sorrows: The Fifth Sorrow—Standing beneath the cross of Jesus: Mary hears Jesus cry out: “I thirst” and realizes that a centurion offers Him vinegar to drink. What good is that—a drink that would burn His parched lips and cause Him to cough, thus aggravating the pierced extremities. Mary, who relieved Jesus’ thirst so many times as a little boy, cannot, this moment, hold a cup of cold water to his parched lips. His thirst and hers become one. His agony is hers.
Jesus’ thirst is not just a physical thirst. It is also a thirst for justice, for truth. An innocent man is being put to death. Truth is being scorned, rejected, denied by the Scribes, Pharisees, and the authorities of Jesus’ day. Over and over again, Mary and Jesus witness truth being mocked by justice systems throughout the world, by corrupt law enforcement personnel and unjust judges, by criminals, by ordinary men and women refusing to acknowledge their sinful ways. Every time truth is rejected, the death of Jesus and Mary’s witness to that death is reenacted in our lives.
To whose truth am I witness today? Is that truth—my own or another’s--being upheld or denied? Are Jesus and Mary standing by thirsting for us to become our true selves, to become one with them in the integrity of our beings, in walking the way of love and justice?
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