The Spirit of Sorrow and Lament

Borys Fiodorowicz, Mater Dolorosa, 20205

I did not expect it to end like this. Not because I did not know suffering. Simeon made sure of that early enough: a sword, he said, will pierce your soul. He did not say when or how many times. Women know this kind of prophecy. It rarely arrives as poetry, it mostly unfolds unexpectedly. I kept the words of the angel, so I kept Simeon’s also. No in a frantic way, not in a curious way, more in a sobering way, expecting reality to unveil it’s plan when the Most High decides it’s time.

I also learned early that a woman’s body carries what words cannot. I carried Him first in hiddenness, when no one would believe me. My body knew before the world could recognize. I had a hint that the sudden silence within me, after angel’s words announcing the Word, was a sign of the Adonai’s confirmation. That hidden silence has brought such a different view. I suddenly saw and understood how the words I have heard all my life can become alive and steadfast to the point of removing all hesitation. Total trust. Not in an infantile way bit in an abandonment to the rescuing hand of the Almighty. There is a particular solitude in that, when your interior reality is enlightened while your body is already rearranging itself around Someone Holy.

Pregnancy and birth was not a glow, it was a surrender. My blood, my food, my sleep, my breath, my travel, none of it entirely my own any more, since the overshadowing described by the angel left a seal on me, kept me going and expecting. The Child grew by taking from me, and I was becoming a Mother by giving. The body does not forget that kind of life.

Years passed in what looked like quiet. Nazareth did not make it into many sermons. But it is where most of life happened, in the hidden maintenance of a body and a home, in the daily repetition of small obediences. Cooking, cleaning, walking, watching, family visits. Small loves weaved around and within. No one calls it that, but that is what it is: the steadying, silent years of my own joys and secrets that no one will ever know because they are too precious to share, they belong to my memories and heart, no one else.

Then there was the loss in the temple. Three days. Do not read that too quickly. Three days of not knowing where He was. Three days of your body oscillating between rush of anxiety and dread. That was just a prelude for the Great Three Days. He was calm at twelve, “Did you not know?” There still was a difference between understanding and the capacity to cross the veiled plan. I knew who He was. But my body still searched for Him like any mother would.

And now I stand here. At the bottom of the tortured Body. The silence within me wants to scream now. My heart is in pieces. It is everything Simeon meant, concentrated into few hours that stretch beyond time. I am here, because there is nothing else I can do. The cost to stand when your entire body wants to collapse, when the mind wants to escape to the Nazareth days. If I fall apart, I will not be able to remain. And remaining is the only thing I have been left with. How much of crowd’s chaos can one endure? I hear the people’s mockery and soldier’s voices, I sense the collapse of the world into a black thunder, I pray that He can leave it all and end this suffering, go to the House of Our Father. And no, there is no silence that can heal my collapsed life.

The crescendo of heavens brings His Body into my arms for a last look and touch and the Spirit of Sorrow and Lament overshadows me now. The sword in my soul slices through the silence. I fall in between.