The face of Jesus cradled in the hand of Mary is an icon of the unity that bonds souls in times of shared pain. There is a oneness here that is above and beyond the biology of birth. There is no distance here, only a melding of hearts that is beyond anything merely physical. Now, he knows, they are bearing together the beginning of a whole new world.

The fourth station of the cross teaches us the freedom that comes with real love. Jesus and Mary meet under the worst of circumstances. He has become an enemy of the state, an outcast from the synagogue. She is a widow left alone in a male world without the sustenance of her only son and no visible means of support. Both of them, in a way, are condemned to death. But she does not beg him to change his life for her sake, she does not spend herself in self-pity and he does not tailor his life given for others to give only to her.

At first, the reality of that jars the soul a bit. Shouldn’t he live his life to please her? Shouldn’t she demand from him his conversion to the ways of the world around him, for his sake, of course, but for hers, as well? Isn’t that what good sons, good parents, good friends, good lovers do? The answer is yes only if we believe that our children belong more to us than to God and only if we believe that anyone—our teachers, our parents, the people we love in life—has more claim on our souls than God does. The answer is yes only if we think that love requires molding a person to ourselves rather than changing ourselves, giving ourselves, so the good of the other is realized. In this case mother and son love one another enough to respect the place of God in both their lives.

—from The Way of the Cross: The Path to New Life by Joan Chittister with art by Janet McKenzie (Orbis).