Ostium Catholic

She stood there. The cross is the moment where following Jesus becomes impossible to distinguish from standing at the foot of it and not running. The women stayed - Mary first among them. What kept her there was not strategy or courage in any ordinary sense. It was love that had already said yes and did not know how to unsay it.

From that hour the disciple took her into his own home. Jesus's last gift from the cross is mutual provision: the mother has a son, the disciple has a mother. She enters the household of the Church not as a distant intercessor but as the one brought home, the one present in the house.

In your twenties the devotion to Mary can feel like something from childhood or something for older women. But the model she offers is the one most needed when following Jesus gets costly: presence, pondering, bringing things to her Son, not running when the situation becomes unbearable. The Rosary is not complicated. It is the prayer of someone who is staying at the foot of the cross with the woman who stayed.

Take her into your home this week. Pray one Rosary - or one decade - with an actual intention. Bring one person or situation you are carrying to her and ask her to bring it to Jesus. See what happens.

Our Lady, Mother of the Church, you stood at the cross when others could not. Teach me that kind of staying. Bring what I carry to your Son. Amen.