Fifth Sorrowful Mystery ~ The Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord, Jesus Christ
As we cannot think of the Child at Bethlehem without His Mother, so neither will the Gospel let us picture to ourselves the Man on Calvary without His Mother also. Jesus and Mary were always one, but there was a peculiar union between them on Calvary. It is to this union we now come, Mary's fifth dolor, the Crucifixion.
The Way of the Cross was ended, and the summit of the mount has been attained a little before the hour of noon. If tradition speaks truly, it was a memorial place even then, fit to be a world’s sanctuary, for it was said to be the site of Adam’s grave, the spot where he rested when the mercy of God accepted and closed his nine hundred years of heroic penance. Close by was the city of David, which was rather the city of God, the center of so much wonderful history, the object of so much pathetic Divine love.
The scene which was now to be enacted there would uncrown the queenly city; but only to crown, with a far more glorious crown of light, and hope, and truth, and beauty, every city of the world where Christ Crucified should be preached and the Blessed Sacrament should dwell. It was but a little while, an hour perhaps, since the last dolor, so that only four hours have elapsed between the fourth dolor and the consummation of the fifth. Yet in sorrow and in sanctification, it is a longer epoch than the eighteen years of Nazareth. In nothing is it truer than in our sanctification, that with God a thousand years are but one day. These hours were filled with mysteries so Divine, with realities so thrilling, that the lapse of time is hardly an element in the agony of Mary’s soul. She comes to the Crucifixion a greater marvel of grace, a greater miracle of suffering, than when an hour ago she had met the Cross-laden Jesus at the corner of the street.
Faber, Fr. Frederick William (2015-02-14). The Foot of the Cross with Mary: or The Sorrows of Mary (Kindle Locations 3964-3977). KIC. Kindle Edition.
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