Good Friday 11.30am

Friday
11:30am

Behold your mother

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19: 25-27)

This moment has inspired so much art, so much devotion, so much prayer. The most powerful is the thirteenth-century Latin Sequence (a form of liturgical hymn) called the Stabat Mater. It has been set to music by so many composers. Andrew Nunn’s favourite is that by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, composed in 1736 in the final weeks of his life. It captures the pain and the dignity of the woman who has to go through what no woman or man should, watching their child die.

And the clock kept ticking.