"If The Romans Hadn't Crucified Jesus, Mary Would Have Done It Herself"

Have you ever heard that saying before? I hadn't until this past weekend. 

But even with my savage googling skills, I cannot find a source for it. I don't know where it came from. I don't know if it is even theologically accurate. But I can't get it out of my head.

What does it mean, "If the Romans hadn't crucified Jesus, Mary would have done it herself." 

To think of Mary as the Sorrowful Mother (Our Lady of Dolours) is to meditate on her privleged place in salvation history as the Mother of the Redeemer, but also the sword that piereced her heart not just once or twice, but continually.

When I was struggling with a vice, I went to a woman I considered to be a kind of prophetess in our church. She promised to pray for me, and emplored me to pray the Seven Sorrows devotion, including in it prayer to the Infant of Prague. This was on Tuesday, July 26th. On July 27th, I undid the shackles and walked out of the cell of my bondage which I had occupied for over twenty five years. Powerful.    

What are the Seven Sorrows of Mary?

1. The Prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:34-35)

2. The Flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13-21)

3. The Loss of Jesus for Three Days (Luke 2:41-50)

4. The Carrying of the Cross (John 19:17)

5. The Crucifixion of Jesus (John 19:18-30)

6. Jesus Taken Down from the Cross (John 19:39-40)

7. Jesus Laid in the Tomb (John 19:39-42)

Our Lady grants seven graces to the souls who honor her daily by meditating (i.e. mental prayer) on her seven sorrows. The Hail Mary is prayed seven times, once after each meditation.   

Mary had to endure the foreknowledge of her suffering imparted to her from Simeon; being forteen, pregnant and pursued by a murderer while an exile in a foreign land; losing her son (and maybe her mind) in a crowd for days on end; watching him agonizingly forced to carry (and being crushed by) the instrument of his own torture; his wrihing in agony and dying; holding his lifeless body in her arms; and burying the fruit of her womb. 

And yet, if the Romans hadn't crucified her son,

Mary would have done it herself.

If true, meditation on that kind of obedience is almost akin to the Incarnation itself, and we say with the Psalmist "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot comprehend it." (Ps 139:6) As I was reflecting on it, were it to be true, it would not be without precedence.

In Genesis 22, God calls to Abraham, to which he replies, "Here I am!" (22:1). Like Abraham, Mary affirms her assent to the Incarnation, "Let it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38). 

God says to Abraham, "because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son...through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” (Gen 22:18). Mary, likewise, "henceforth all genearations will call me blessed" (Lk 1:48)

But as Abraham did not seek to withhold Isaac because he put the absolute will of God first--even when in this case it seemed to contradict reason and the moral law--Mary did not seek to shelter Jesus from the world through motherly protection. She offers him to the Father in the Temple, and in doing so, offers him up to the world to be used for God's purposes. She endured the suffering which accompanied that obedience to the divine will--that the lamb be immolated in perfect sacrifice--a suffering so potent that only a mother could know what it means.

 Think about that suffering for a moment--of having to give birth only to see your son die. And not pass away peacefully, but in agony, and not before a grueling course of tortue and humiliation. Not only that, his death which only you knew as his mother was for the sake of the very people who were scourging and mocking, spitting and flogging him, choosing a common guity criminal to be released over your innocent son. 

And yet, as if your sorrow and suffering had not been magnified enough, were the crowd to choose to release your son to his mother, you would demand the hammer, and nail him to the tree with the same hands you held his infant body with in the manger. The headlines appear the next day: Mother Takes Matters Into Her Own Hands, Crucifies Son. What kind of father pulls a knife on his own son in the name of religion? What kind of mother would put the salvation of ungrateful men ahead of her own flesh and blood? What kind of sadism is this?

In the Divine Economy, this did not come to pass. Mary's fiat was in bringing the Light of life into the world--it was not God's will that she also be the one to end it. Maybe it would have been too much. I don't know. Such knowledge is too much for me.

We were saved through Christ's death, but also Mary's "Yes." God did not ask her to extend that yes to do the shameful job of the Romans. But her favor with God was in her holy obedience. She did not scoff like Zechariah, never flinched, never hesitated, even when she did not understand the message of the angel Gabriel. She assented to not only the Incarnation, but all the suffering that came with it as a mother. She loved her son as her own flesh, and in loving her son she loved God. But she did not love her son more than his Father, to whom he (and her) were subject. 

God did not ask her to do the shameful job of the Romans--but if God had asked her to, I would have to believe she would have set the nails to the hands of her son herself, and in an unimaginable act of agony, brought down the hammer on them. Bone of my bone! Flesh of my flesh! An incomprehensible act of sacrifice, beyond what any mother not highly favored by God could humanely bear. All for the sake of lukewarm, ungrateful, spite-filled men, that they might be saved and reconciled to God by this shameful death. 

No wonder the devil fears her so much. For Lucifer fell from Heaven because of his disobedience. The Mother of God, co-mediatrix of all grace, makes getting back there possible by her obedience. The power of the obedience of Mary knows no bounds, and with that obedience comes the floodgate of grace. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is too high; I cannot comprehend it.