Seton Magazine Catholic Homeschool Articles, Advice & Resources
When Jesus met the weeping women on His Way to Calvary, Jesus said, “Weep not for Me, but weep for your children.”
Children were with their mothers in the crowd of weeping women. Though suffering on His way to Calvary, Jesus recognized the sorrow and yet also the gratitude that the weeping women showed for Him Who had worked so many miracles for children.
The mothers likely remembered the time Jesus cured the possessed young man who ran around like “a lunatic,” falling often into a fire or water.
Among the weeping mothers on the Way of the Cross may have been the mother of the daughter of Jairus. When her daughter died of a sickness, this mother was deeply grateful that Jesus brought her back to life, which was seen by the group of mourners, who were friends of the mother!
There may also have been the distressed weeping mother who had followed the body of her young son in a casket as the mourners walked to the graveyard. Jesus came, stopped the crowd, and touched the casket, saying (Luke 7:14-15): “Young man, I say to thee, arise! And he that was dead, sat up and began to speak; and Jesus gave him to his mother.”
Probably present as well were Mary and Martha who walked with Jesus out to the tomb where their brother Lazarus had been buried. Once the rock was pushed back from the tomb entrance, Jesus commanded in a loud voice of authority, “Lazarus, Come Forth!” Suddenly, a living Lazarus, so wrapped in burial cloths that he had to struggle out of the dark depths of the tomb, suddenly dropped to his knees in front of Jesus. “My Lord and My God” were likely his first words in front of his astonished sisters, family, and friends.
The mother whose son, crippled from birth, lay day after day at the pool of Bethsaida, may also have been present. The boy was never able to reach the miraculous water for a cure. Suddenly Jesus came by and in an instant cured the boy as he lay alone on his cot. How grateful his parents were to be able to announce, “He was crippled and now he walks!”
Within the crowds may have been the mother of the young man born blind who was given sight by Jesus. Jesus said (John 9:5), “I am the light of the world.” Then “He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle and spread clay upon [the young man’s] eyes.” As Jesus commanded, the boy went and washed in the pool of Siloe, and “he came back seeing.”
Many of us mothers can tell stories of how Jesus has helped our children in different ways. All of us have our own ‘miraculous’ stories to tell of the great blessings that have happened in our family.
All of us, as parents, certainly want to join the mothers who surrounded Jesus as He carried His cross. All of us want to join those mothers in thanksgiving as they wept in sorrow and in gratitude for the miracles that He brought to them and to their children.
Each day as we start our homeschooling, we can gaze up to Mary and Jesus in the 8th Station of the Cross and join thousands of other mothers, thanking Jesus for the miracles He has brought into our lives. We can ask Him for the strength to bear the burdens of the day, and yet to make those burdens lighter for our children in their studies.
Let us mothers and fathers ask Jesus for the grace of patience, strength of will, and the ability to teach our children using the best methods possible. Let us ask Jesus for the gift of not only teaching our children the Faith but also for the gift of our children continuing to practice the Catholic Faith in our secular society.
Jesus, as we pray before you at the 8th Station, help us to take the time out of our busy day and say, “Thank You, Jesus, for sacrificing for me, for my spouse, and for the souls of my children.”
Help us parents to teach our children that without religious education and without the Catholic Faith as the basis of all learning, all other education is of little worth for eternal life. Amen.
