The two alternative Gospel readings offered for today's celebration are two aspects of the same theme - Mary is asociated with Jesus' Passion in a unique way. In Luke, it is the passive aspect: The Passion of the Son will pierce the heart of the Mother. John desribes the active aspect of this sharing: Mary stands near the Cross, fully conscious of the great event of History that is taking place at that moment. As a Mother Priest, she is offering her Son in Sacrifice of Atonement. And from her dying Son she receives a new mandate: "Here is your son, here is your mother." From this moment on, the mother of the victim will be the mother of the redeemed. The Virgin - Mother who had a painless delivery, now is suffering the birth-pangs of the spiritual birth of the new children of God and her children. And we learn to love this mother more, conscious of how dear we have cost her!

After the responsorial psalm there is a fragment of the popular sequence called Stabat Mater a 13th century Latin hymn and it means "the Mother was standing." The popular first stanza reads: "At the cross her station keeping, Mary stood in sorrow weeping..."