A friend once told me the cruelest face
in the crowd of the crucifixion was not
a Roman soldier tossing dice into the dust,
not a sobbing disciple, not even
a stone-faced observer, trying to break the monotony of
his day.
No,
the worst witness to this tragedy was
Mary.
Could you imagine?
Your child giving his life up
for a father you hardly knew?
No ghost can ease the suffering of that moment—
I don’t care how holy.
They say she knew,
back in that little town of Bethlehem with
a babe in her arms that she
had given birth to greatness.
But did she know
that every year we would celebrate
the death of her only son
with
no regard to how she felt—
how it felt to watch her beautiful boy
Burn and
Rise
from his own ashes?
We retell the story piece by piece
and only briefly mention that she was there—
no one stops to utter her prayer,
pay homage to her pain.
Mary was a mother
who washed the bloody wounds of her son
for your benefit,
but you leave her out of the story.
You remember how her son
set the world on fire for centuries,
but you forget how he got here—
how you got here,
head bowed before a station,
the smoke of incense
filling your lungs with
absolution.
It was Mary.
