On the dreadful day of the Crucifixion, the mother was found standing by the cross, with her sister and Mary Magdalene.  “When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved [that is, St. John], he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!  Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother!  And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home."[14]

[Footnote 14:  John, chapter xix. verses 26, 27.]

We can imagine the mother’s anguish in seeing her son suffer this cruel and ignominious death.  He had lived only to do good, and now he was dying an innocent sacrifice to his enemies.  At such a moment the mother might truly feel that a sword was piercing her soul, as the old man Simeon[15] had once prophesied of her, many years before.

[Footnote 15:  Luke, chapter ii. verse 35.]

    “Wearied was her heart with grieving,
    Worn her breast with sorrow heaving,
    Through her soul the sword had passed.

    “Ah! how sad and broken-hearted
    Was that blessed mother, parted
    From the God-begotten One!

    “How her loving heart did languish
    When she saw the mortal anguish
    Which o’erwhelmed her peerless Son."[16]

[Footnote 16:  From Stabat Mater.]

Time passed, and Jesus now being dead, his friends were permitted by the governor to remove him from the cross.  Joseph of Arimathea took the lead, as he was to lay the body in a new sepulchre recently made in his garden.  Nicodemus was also there, bringing linen and spices for the burial, and the loving women lingered to see these preparations.

We can imagine how they might all stand aside to make room for the mother Mary.  Perhaps, indeed, they would withdraw a little way to leave her for a moment alone with her son.  The years seem to melt away, and again she gathers him in her lap as when he was a babe.  All the motherly tenderness which she has had long pent up in her heart now overflows.  If she has sometimes felt a little lonely that in his manhood he no longer needed her care, she forgets it now.  He is still her child.

The marble group by Michelangelo interprets such a moment for us.  The Italians call the subject the Pieta, which means compassion, but the name scarcely expresses all the emotions of the mother.  She seems as strong and young as when she brooded over her babe in the Bethlehem manger.  “Purity enjoys eternal youth” was the sculptor’s explanation to those who objected.

[Illustration:  THE PIETA. St. Peter’s, Rome.]

Across her capacious, motherly lap lies the slender, youthful figure of the dead Christ.  The head falls back, and the limbs are relaxed in death.  Suffering has left no trace on his face.  The nail prints in hands and feet, and the scar in the side, are the only signs of his crucifixion.  The delicately moulded body is beautiful in repose.