Monday, April 6, 2020

Mary receives the Body of her Son

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)


Mary receives the Body of her Son. J-J Tissot
The following is our view of the scene which now took place.  Beyond the platform of Calvary, on the same side as the Garden of Joseph of Arimathæa and not far from the Sepulchre in which Jesus was to be buried, was a spot well fitted for the performance of the first of the touching rights which the Virgin was eager to perform for the sacred body of her divine Son.  She was seated on some natural steps in the rock and the body of Jesus was laid near her, in such a manner that it could rest against her knees with the head upon her breast, so that she could lavish all her tenderness on it.



The round stone seen from within. J-J Tissot
Some warm water was provided close at hand for the melancholy toilette of death, and with its aid the matted hair is freed from blood, the wounds are washed, and the crown of thorns, which is glued to the head with dried gore, is removed.  Then the beard, the neck and the upper part of the body are washed.  The precious blood is connected with sponges, which have been dipped in tepid water, and is placed in a vessel ready to receive it.  The deep wounds on the head, in the hands, and on the right shoulder, with a gaping opening in the side, are anointed with spices; the hair is smoothed and parted, and the distorted features gradually resume something of their original aspect.

The Apostles and disciples, who have been looking on from afar ready to flee, then venture to approach now that their enemies have left Calvary.  The Holy Women are also present, doing their best to aid the Mother of the Saviour.  The crown of thorns when removed is put carefully aside.  That precious relic will at first by reverently preserved by the family of Jesus, then it will pass into the hands of the first Christian Bishops and later into the care of the Emperors of Constantinople, until at last it will be taken charge of by Saint Louis, to be preserved in Paris until the present day, a silent witness of the troubles and the triumphs of the Church of Christ.

Saint Anselm, in his Cur Deus Homo, claims that it was revealed to him by the Virgin herself that Joseph of Arimathæa, when he went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus, urged as one of the reasons why it should be given to him the fact of the Mother of the Victim being at the point of death from grief.  If Jesus, condemned as He had been by the usual legal authority, might be supposed to have been guilty, there was at least no doubt that His mother was innocent and deserved the compassion of the procurator.  Would it be just to deprive her in her deep affection of the melancholy joy of burying her Son?  Must she, innocent as she was, be completely crushed by an act of harshness so unprecedented?

Totus tuus ego sum 
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam 

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