JESUS AND HIS MOTHER.
Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One!
My flesh, my Lord!--what name? I do not know
A name that seemeth not too high or low,
Too far from me or heaven.
My Jesus, _that_ is best!
* * *
Sleep, sleep, my saving One.
MRS. BROWNING.
The first friend a child has in this world is its mother. It comes
here an utter stranger, knowing no one; but it finds love waiting for
it. Instantly the little stranger has a friend, a bosom to nestle in,
an arm to encircle it, a hand to minister to its helplessness. Love is
born with the child. The mother presses it to her breast, and at once
her heart's tendrils twine about it.
It is a good while before the child becomes conscious of the wondrous
love that is bending over it, yet all the time the love is growing in
depth and tenderness. In a thousand ways, by a thousand delicate arts,
the mother seeks to waken in her child a response to her own yearning
love. At length the first gleams of answering affection appear--the
child has begun to love. From that hour the holy friendship grows.
The two lives become knit in one.
When God would give the world a great man, a man of rare spirit and
transcendent power, a man with a lofty mission, he first prepares a
woman to be his mother. Whenever in history we come upon such a man,
we instinctively begin to ask about the character of her on whose bosom
he nestled in infancy, and at whose knee he learned his life's first
lessons. We are sure of finding here the secret of the man's
greatness. When the time drew nigh for the incarnation of the Son of
God, we may be sure that into the soul of the woman who should be his
mother, who should impart her own life to him, who should teach him his
first lessons, and prepare him for his holy mission, God put the
loveliest and the best qualities that ever were lodged in any woman's
life. We need not accept the teaching that exalts the mother of Jesus
to a place beside or above her divine Son. We need have no sympathy
whatever with the dogma that ascribes worship to the Virgin Mary, and
teaches that the Son on his throne must be approached by mortals
through his more merciful, more gentle-hearted mother. But we need not
let these errors concerning Mary obscure the real blessedness of her
character. We remember the angel's greeting, "Blessed art thou among
women." Hers surely was the highest honor ever conferred upon any
woman.
"Say of me as the Heavenly said, 'Thou art
The blessedest of women!'--blessedest,
Not holiest, not noblest,--no high name,
Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame,
When I sit meek in heaven!"
We know how other men, men of genius, rarely ever have failed to give
to their mothers the honor of whatever of greatness or worth they had
attained. But somehow we shrink from saying that Jesus was influenced
by his mother as other good men have been; that he got from her much of
the beauty and the power of his life. We are apt to fancy that his
mother was not to him what mothers ordinarily are to their children;
that he did not need mothering as other children do; that by reason of
the Deity indwelling, his character unfolded from within, without the
aid of home teaching and training, and the other educational influences
which do so much in shaping the character of children in common homes.
But there is no Scriptural ground for this feeling. The humanity of
Jesus was just like our humanity. He came into the world just as
feeble and as untaught as any other child that ever was born. No
mother was ever more to her infant than Mary was to Jesus. She taught
him all his first lessons. She gave him his first thoughts about God,
and from her lips he learned the first lispings of prayer. Jewish
mothers cared very tenderly for their children. They taught them with
unwearying patience the words of God. One of the rabbis said, "God
could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers." This saying
shows how sacred was the Jewish thought of the mother's work for her
child.
Every true mother feels a sense of awe in her soul when she bends over
her own infant child; but in the case of Mary we may be sure that the
awe was unusual, because of the mystery of the child's birth. In the
annunciation the angel had said to her, "That which is to be born shall
be called holy, the Son of God." Then the night of her child's birth
there was a wondrous vision of angels, and the shepherds who beheld it
hastened into the town; and as they looked upon the baby in the manger,
they told the wondering mother what they had seen and heard. We are
told that Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.
While she could not understand what all this meant, she knew at least
that hers was no common child; that in some wonderful sense he was the
Son of God.
This consciousness must have given to her motherhood an unusual
thoughtfulness and seriousness. How close to God she must have lived!
How deep and tender her love must have been! How pure and clean her
heart must have been kept! How sweet and patient she must have been as
she moved about at her tasks, in order that no harsh or bitter thought
or feeling might ever cast a shadow upon the holy life which had been
intrusted to her for training and moulding.
Only a few times is the veil lifted to give us a glimpse of mother and
child. On the fortieth day he was taken to the temple, and given to
God. Then it was that another reminder of the glory of this child was
given to the mother. An old man, Simeon, took the infant in his arms,
and spoke of him as God's salvation. As he gave the parents his
parting blessing he lifted the veil, and showed them a glimmering of
the future. "This child is set for the fall and rising again of many
in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against." Then to the
mother he said solemnly, "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own
soul also." This was a foretelling of the sorrow which should come to
the heart of Mary, and which came again and again, until at last she
saw her son on a cross. The shadow of the cross rested on Mary's soul
all the years. Every time she rocked her baby to sleep, and laid him
down softly, covering his face with kisses, there would come into her
heart a pang as she remembered Simeon's words. Perhaps, too, words
from the old prophets would come into her mind,--"He is despised and
rejected of men; a man of sorrows;" "He was bruised for our
iniquities,"--and the tears would come welling into her eyes. Every
time she saw her child at play, full of gladness, all unconscious of
any sorrow awaiting him, a nameless fear would steal over her as she
remembered the ominous words which had fallen upon her ear, and which
she could not forget.
Soon after the presentation in the temple came the visit of the magi.
Again the mother must have wondered as she heard these strangers from
the East speak of her infant boy as the "King of the Jews," and saw
them falling down before him in reverent worship, and then laying their
offerings at his feet. Immediately following this came the flight into
Egypt. How the mother must have pressed her child to her bosom as she
fled with him to escape the cruel danger! By and by they returned, and
from that time Nazareth was their home.
Only once in the thirty years do we have a glimpse of mother and child.
It was when Jesus went to his first Passover. When the time came for
returning home the child tarried behind. After a painful search the
mother found him in one of the porches of the temple, sitting with the
rabbis, an eager learner. There is a tone of reproach in her words,
"Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have
sought thee sorrowing." She was sorely perplexed. All the years
before this her son had implicitly obeyed her. He had never resisted
her will, never withdrawn from her guidance. Now he had done something
without asking her about it--as it were, had taken his life into his
own hand. It was a critical point in the friendship of this mother and
her child. It is a critical moment in the friendship of any mother and
her child when the child begins to think and act for himself, to do
things without the mother's guidance.
The answer of Jesus is instructive: "I must be about my Father's
business." There was another besides his mother to whom he owed
allegiance. He was the Son of God as well as the son of Mary. Parents
should remember this always in dealing with their children,--their
children are more God's than theirs.
It is interesting to notice what follows that remarkable experience of
mother and child in the temple. Jesus returned with his mother to the
lowly Nazareth home, and was subject to her. In recognizing his
relation to God as his heavenly Father, he did not become any less the
child of his earthly mother. He loved his mother no less because he
loved God more. Obedience to the Father in heaven did not lead him to
reject the rule of earthly parenthood. He went back to the quiet home,
and for eighteen years longer found his Father's business in the common
round of lowly tasks which made up the daily life of such a home.
It would be intensely interesting to read the story of mother and son
during those years, but it has not been written for us. They must have
been years of wondrous beauty. Few things in this world are more
beautiful than such friendships as one sometimes sees between mother
and son. The boy is more the lover than the child. The two enter into
the closest companionship. A sacred and inviolable intimacy is formed
between them. The boy opens all his heart to his mother, telling her
everything; and she, happy woman, knows how to be a boy's mother and to
keep a mother's place without ever startling or checking the shy
confidences, or causing him to desire to hide anything from her. The
boy whispers his inmost thoughts to his mother, and listens to her wise
and gentle counsels with loving eagerness and childish faith--
"Her face his holy skies;
The air he breathes his mother's breath,
His stars his mother's eyes."
Not always are mother and boy such friends. Some mothers do not think
it worth while to give the time and thought necessary to enter into a
boy's life in such confidential way. But we may be sure that between
the mother of Jesus and her son the most tender and intimate friendship
existed. He opened his soul to her; and she gave him not a mother's
love only, but also a mother's wise counsel and strong, inspiring
sympathy.
It is almost certain that sorrow entered the Nazareth home soon after
the visit to Jerusalem. Joseph is not mentioned again; and it is
supposed that he died, leaving Mary a widow. On Jesus, as the eldest
son, the care of the mother now rested. Knowing the deep love of his
heart and his wondrous gentleness, it is easy for us to understand with
what unselfish devotion he cared for his mother after she was widowed.
He had learned the carpenter's trade; and day after day, early and
late, he wrought with his hands to provide for her wants. Very sacred
must have been the friendship of mother and son in those days. Her
gentleness, quietness, hopefulness, humility, and prayerfulness, must
have wrought themselves into the very tissue of his character as he
moved through the days in such closeness. Unto the end he carried in
his soul the benedictions of his mother's life.
The thirty silent years of preparation closed, and Jesus went out to
begin his public ministry. The first glimpse we have of the mother is
at the wedding at Cana. Jesus was there too. The wine failed, and
Mary went to Jesus about the matter. "They have no wine," she said.
Evidently she was expecting some manifesting of supernatural power.
All the years since his birth she had been carrying in her heart a
great wonder of expectation. Now he had been baptized, and had entered
upon his work as the Messiah. Had not the time come for
miracle-working?
The answer of Jesus startles us: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?
mine hour is not yet come." The words seem to have in them a tone of
reproof, or of repulse, unlike the words of so gentle and loving a son.
But really there is in his reply nothing inconsistent with all that we
have learned to think of the gentleness and lovingness of the heart of
Jesus. In substance he said only that he must wait for his Father's
word before doing any miracle, and that the time for this had not yet
come. Evidently his mother understood him. She was not hurt by his
words, nor did she regard them as a refusal to help in the emergency.
Her words to the servants show this: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do
it." She had learned her lesson of sweet humility. She knew now that
God had the highest claim on her son's obedience, and she quietly
waited for the divine voice. The holy friendship was not marred.
There is another long period in which no mention is made of Mary.
Probably she lived a secluded life. But one day at Capernaum, in the
midst of his popularity, when Jesus was preaching to a great crowd, she
and his brothers appeared on the outside of the throng, and sent a
request that they might speak with him. It seems almost certain that
the mother's errand was to try to get him away from his exhausting
work; he was imperilling his health and his safety. Jesus refused to
be interrupted. But it was really only an assertion that nothing must
come between him and his duty. The Father's business always comes
first. Human ties are second to the bond which binds us to God. No
dishonor was done by Jesus to his mother in refusing to be drawn away
by her loving interest from his work. The holiest human friendship
must never keep us from doing the will of God. Other mothers in their
love for their children have made the same mistake that the mother of
Jesus made,--have tried to withhold or withdraw their children from
service which seemed too hard or too costly. The voice of tenderest
love must be quenched when it would keep us from doing God's will.
The next mention of the mother of Jesus is in the story of the cross.
Ah, holy mother-love, constant and faithful to the end! At length
Simeon's prophecy is fulfilled,--a sword is piercing the mother's soul
also. "Jesus was crucified on the cross; Mary was crucified at the
foot of the cross."
Note only one feature of the scene,--the mother-love there is in it.
The story of clinging mother-love is a wonderful one. A mother never
forsakes her child. Mary is not the only mother who has followed a son
to a cross. Here we have the culmination of this mother's friendship
for her son. She is watching beside his cross. O friendship constant,
faithful, undying, and true!
But what of the friendship of the dying son for his mother? In his own
anguish does he notice her? Yes; one of the seven words spoken while
he hung on the cross told of changeless love in his heart for her.
Mary was a woman of more than fifty, "with years before her too many
for remembering, too few for forgetting." The world would be desolate
for her when her son was gone. So he made provision for her in the
shelter of a love in which he knew she would be safe. As he saw her
led away by the beloved disciple to his own home, part of the pain of
dying was gone from his own heart. His mother would have tender care.
The story of this blessed friendship should sweeten forever in
Christian homes the relation of mother and child. It should make every
mother a better woman and a better mother. It should make every child
a truer, holier child. Every home should have its sacred friendships
between parents and children. Thus something of heaven will be brought
down to our dull earth; for, as Mrs. Browning says,--
In the pure loves of child and mother
Two human loves make one divine.