If I could have five minutes on my own in St Peter’s Basilica I’d spend them in prayer before Michelangelo’s Pieta. It is the most exquisite piece of art that I have ever seen. I still kick myself for not ever having risen from my sleep early enough to arrive before the crowds who flood the Vatican after breakfast and excitedly disturb the peace of contemplating this haunting sorrow of Mary.

Surprisingly, I’m not a fan of sculptures generally speaking. Until I laid eyes on the Pieta the only other statue I have been taken by is the Three Graces by Antonio Canova—which is a blog post for another time. Sculpted in the 15th century from a single slab of marble, the Pieta depicts the Virgin Mary cradling her adult son in her lap just moments after his death on the Cross.

If any of you have seen Mel Gibson’s graphic film The Passion, or read medical accounts of what happens during a crucifixion (not for the feint hearted), you will understand more deeply the trauma of what Mary has just witnessed. We can only begin to imagine the crippling pain she would have experienced when confronted by the death of her son now lying bloody and lifeless in her arms.

Despite this being the reality of the scene in front of us, Michelangelo chose not to depict Mary in pangs of grief. Rather, he shows the characteristic sweetness of the Virgin and the impression of quiet resignation, as if to indicate her faithful trust that this must be the will of God. Neither did the artist include any but the tiniest indicators of the bodily signs of the Passion on Jesus’s corpse. We see only the small puncture wounds from the nails that held him on the Cross. Why? Why erase signs of the violent end that Our Lord suffered? Why distort the age of his mother and gloss over her anguish? Is it because art needs to appear pleasantly alluring? Or is it perhaps because the sculptor knows that we all too often seek to avert our eyes from the pain of reality and don’t wish to engage in any confronting realisation that we had some part to play in it?

Art is known for its manner of pushing boundaries, of encouraging people to see past the surface level of a story to depict a more profound reality. Michelangelo’s Pieta is no different. Consider: Christ’s broken body in the hands of humans, just as it is in the Eucharist; his position on the lap of his mother as though about to tumble off and fall down onto the altar of sacrifice; the timelessness of Mary that points to her incorruptible purity; her oversized body symbolic of the growth in strength at what she had to bear in this moment. Perhaps the most captivating aspect of all though is the Blessed Virgin’s expression of quiet acquiescence.

It’s as though she knew that this situation was in some way inevitable and that she remains tranquil through her piercing grief because of her faith in and yielding to God’s plan. Knowing the Scriptures as we do, we believe that she did understand, at least to some degree, that the moment would arrive when she would be required to surrender her son.

The evangelist Luke recounts the presentation of the child Jesus in the temple (2:22-38). Here we meet Simeon, a just and righteous man who visits the temple in order to see the Saviour and offer him a blessing. Prophetically he tells Mary that one day her son will fall and that her soul will be pierced with a sword. Traditionally this sword has been associated with the suffering of Mary that Michelangelo depicts in the Pieta, however, Mary’s presence at the foot of the Cross is not mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (we only learn of that in the Fourth Gospel, John).

Renowned biblical scholar, Brendan Byrne, suggests that the sword has a broader reference and that it points to Mary’s surrender of her son to the work of his Father. This sixth sword of Mary suffering then is perhaps the greatest sorrow of all. To have lived each moment of his life in fear of the day that eventually her son would be taken from her can only have increased Mary’s sorrow.

If even one as privileged and faithful as Mary was to God was still subjected to such great sufferings, how are we to take comfort from her? As she sat cradling Jesus in her arms on Calvary she would not have been able to put into context his example on the Cross of utter obedience and submission to the will of the Father because at that time she was not privy to the next part of the story as we are.

Although Mary knew of her son’s identity from his moment of conception, she did not know of the Father’s redemptive plan for him as we do. She did not know that in just three days’ time her son would be with her again having risen from the tomb he was laid in. His triumph over death was yet to be revealed to her. Nor did she have the writings of theologians such as the great St Thomas Aquinas as we do to aid in dissecting the effects of the Passion, death, and resurrection of her son. And yet, despite all this unknowing she remained steadfast in her faith and to the puzzling plan of the Father. She did what Aquinas teaches we all must do for salvation: she aligned her will to that of Christ’s in charity so that through her son she united her will to the will of the Father.

She knew that being Love and Goodness themselves that he can only will what is the ultimate best for us. What God wants more than anything is our intimate union with him for eternity in ecstatic happiness, even if that means that we must endure the kind of sorrow that Mary did in her life. But remember too her reward for such fidelity: she bore her sorrow with love so perfectly that she was honoured both on earth (with the gift of motherhood to the whole of humanity) and in heaven where she reigns eternally, body and soul, as Queen.

~ Fiona Bradley

Fiona Bradley is a PhD candidate at the Australian Catholic University researching the role of charity in the soteriology of St Thomas Aquinas.