Mother of Sorrows (Part 3): The Pieta
Since I was in high school, I have loved Michelangelo’s works, particularly his Pieta. When studying abroad in college, I had the privilege and the blessing of being able to personally see this great statue during our trip to Rome. Every Pieta is a depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the dead and crucified body of her Son, Jesus, in her arms. It is the iconic image of grief, of indescribable pain, mourning, and offering. Michelangelo’s Pieta, however, is unique.
In most Pietas, the 33-year old body of Jesus the man dwarfs that of his mother. However, Michelangelo’s Mary is not only large enough to hold the entire dead body of her Son across her lap, but she does so with an apparent easy strength that detracts not in the least from her obvious femininity. Michelangelo’s Mary is strong in her grief, holding her Son’s brutalized body with the same love and tenderness with which she carried him in her womb. Her sorrow is apparent as she cradles him with one hand, but she opens the other hand to the heavens in surrender of a grief too acute to be borne by the mortal soul–so acute she must offer it to the Father in fiat.
And fiat is what defines Mary as a perfect human being. The word fiat, in its simplest form, means “yes,” but in actuality refers to the deepest surrender of which the human soul is capable. It is a total, unreserved, and complete giving over of oneself to God–so complete a self-gift that there is no part of vanity, fear, doubt, or suspicion in the giving. The giving, in fact, is so total and so innocent, that it is similar to the self-abandon and surrender of a nursing infant at her mother’s breast or a child asleep in his father’s arms. It is complete and utter trust. It is what God the Father asks of us in this life, what we are called to as his children, the most pure act of which we are capable, and an act that defined Mary’s entire life.
Mary’s first (and most well-known) fiat occurs during the Annunciation when she is asked to conceive and bear Christ in her womb. She says, “Let it be done to me according to your Word.” This is fiat. Again and again, throughout Jesus’ life, Mary offers up her fiat to her heavenly Father and her divine Son, surrendering her will and herself to a purpose beyond that which she can imagine in her earthly body. Another well-known image of Mary’s fiat is her standing at the foot of the Cross, watching her Son die, with only John the Beloved standing near in comfort and devotion.
And we see her fiat so poignantly in the image of the Pieta. Mary is offering her Son’s brutal death and traumatized body back to the Father, surrendering to a plan that must have, in that moment, seemed profoundly unreal and purposeless when compared with the concrete weight of her child’s dead body in her arms. And yet Mary is the perfect human. So in this moment, when most of us would experience utter despair, Mary gives it back to God. Because that is what she does. That is who she is.
The day after I held Lizzy’s body as they took her off of life support, my sister took me to the Basilica to see the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows. As I knelt before yet another statue of the Pieta, tears streaming down my face, I prayed to Our Lady. But this prayer was not formalized or intentional; it contained no words or structure. Torn open, raw, and feeling as though I had been flayed from the inside out, I simply stared at the Pieta and let my pain flow in a bleeding river towards Our Lady. I knew that she, who had witnessed the most horrific death of her beloved Son, would understand what I was feeling.
And as we walked out of that chapel, I told my sister that even though my baby’s body had been so broken and distorted from all of the interventions, resuscitation, oxygen deprivation, and surgeries, at least I knew that it had been broken in an attempt to save her life, not to take it. I did not (and do not) have to live with the horror that Mary had to (and that, unspeakably, some mothers in this world have to) of knowing that her child’s body had been brutalized and broken by people trying to cause him as much pain as possible. This is a greater pain than I have, and I am not so lost in my grief that I cannot recognize it.
And so now I sleep under my statue of Michelangelo’s Pieta that I bought while in Rome, and when I say the rosary, I stare at this statue, trying to give my pain to Our Lady, who will give it to her Son, who has unmade death itself with his death. Imperfect, weak, doubting, and frail human that I am, I do not pretend to aspire to the type of fiat of which Mary was capable. Instead, like a wounded child, I curl up around my pain and ask her to stay with me. She, fully human and fully mother, will understand. And in her perfect maternity, she reminds me of what I forget so often: that I am not alone in this grief.
