Fr Peter Helman

“Let me mingle tears with you, mourning him who mourned for me, all the days that I may live.”
—Hans-Urs Von Balthasar 

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Dear friends,

Each Lent I fall in love all over again with the Medieval hymn Stabat Mater (“At the cross her station keeping”). Stanzas of it are sung as part of the devotion known as the Way of the Cross, or the Stations of the Cross. Maybe you’ve noticed a series of oil paintings hung in the sanctuary depicting Jesus’ passion and death. They are the work of parishioner Kurt Anderson. There are fourteen stations in all. Prayers and readings from scripture are offered at each. (Click here for the bulletin we use when we pray the Stations every Wednesday morning and evening throughout Lent.)

The Stations of the Cross are also a way of living into Mary’s own journey of faith even to the Cross. The Stabat Mater is about her journey. I’ve come to love Mary so much through the Stations and this hymn to her.

At the Thirteenth Station, the dead body of Jesus is taken down from the cross, and his mother is there to receive him in weariness and sorrow on her lap. The scene is wrapped in silence. It is a scene of infinite suffering, of unimaginable loss and pain, of what only a mother can know.

What is strange and wonderful to me is that the more I pray the Stations, the more I feel Mary praying with me and even in and through me. I never expected to feel her standing so close as I walk from station to station, down one side of the sanctuary and up the other. She came to me one day unaware. And now she is so close that her sorrow becomes my own. Her love for her son grows in me. Her hope and trust that he didn’t die in vain takes root in me. She shows me in her harrowing a love that cannot be undone by death but is the very house and gate of heaven, for she is that house, she who bore in her whom nature’s Lord, her own creator. Jesus rests in her arms of compassion, and she gives him to me to rest in mine so that I might gaze on human suffering and learn compassion.

For the days of Lent still ahead, I’ve included below the text of the Stabat Mater. I hope you’ll bear with its length and find in it the voice of Love calling you to walk with Mary with her son. And I hope you’ll join us on Wednesdays during Lent as we pray the Stations at 7:45am and 5:15pm.

Peace to you,

—Fr Peter 

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At the cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.

bow’d with anguish, deeply grievéd,
now at length the sword hath pass’d.

O that blesséd one, grief-laiden,
blesséd mother, blesséd maiden,
Mother of th’ all-holy One;

O that silent, ceaseless mourning,
O those dim eyes, never turning
from that wondrous, suffering Son.

Who on Christ’s dear mother gazing,
in her trouble so amazing,
born of woman, would not weep?

For all people’s sins, in anguish,
there she saw the victim languish,
bleed in torments, bleed and die:

Saw the Lord’s anointed taken,
saw her child in death forsaken,
heard his last expir’ng cry.

Jesus, may her deep devotion
stir in me the same emotion,
Fount of love, Redeemer kind.

That my heart fresh ardor gaining,
and a purer love attaining,
may with thee acceptance find.

In the passion of my Maker,
be my sinful soul partaker,
may I bear with her my part;

Of his passion bear the token,
in a spirit bow’d and broken,
bear his death within my heart.

May his wounds both wound and heal me,
he enkindle, cleanse, and heal me,
be his cross my hope and stay.

May he, when the mountains quiver,
from that flame which burns for ever
shield me on the judgement day.

Jesus, may thy cross defend me,
and thy saving death befriend me,
cherish’d by thy deathless grace;

When to dust my dust returneth,
grant a soul that to thee yearneth,
in thy paradise a place.