What struck me watching The Passion this year was Yeshua’s relationship with His mother. Of course I always knew Yeshua and Mary were close, but what that means never hit me before. In the scene at their home in which Yeshua is building the table, I suddenly got it. Joseph has died. It’s just Yeshua and Mary living together for however many years, until Yeshua is thirty. And they are so close. They live life just with each other, and only the two of them really understand that Yeshua is set apart from everyone else. They are deeply bonded and each means the world to the other. They delight in each other. They care deeply for each other. And they suffer with each other.
Whenever one of the disciples meets Mary, he calls her “Mother.” She must have been around a lot for them to have such familiar but respectful ease with her.
All throughout The Passion, Mary is keeping close to Yeshua, trying to comfort Him, and is in absolute agony because of His suffering. Not just because He is her son. Because He is her everything. Her entire heart is filled with love only for Him. He is all she cares about. He is her world in a deeply real way. And she is His world too.
So often Mary is depicted in ways that are glorious and pious and holy and set her apart. But sometimes I think we forget about the person she was. To remember that person is to better understand the very real and down-to-earth bond she had with Yeshua, and the example she set that is actually something we can follow. What a beautiful relationship they shared. What a concrete example of relationship with Yeshua to follow.
