Mary’s temptations at Calvary

If Mary was tempted, as even Jesus was in the desert, this took place above all beneath the cross. And the temptation was very deep and painful because the reason for it was Jesus himself. She believed in the promises, she believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God; she knew that if Jesus had appealed to the Father, he would have sent him “more than twelve legions of angels” (Matt 12 :53).

But she saw that Jesus didn’t do this. If he freed himself from the cross, he would also free her from this dreadful sorrow, but he didn’t do it. Yet Mary didn’t cry out, “Come down from the cross; save yourself and me!” Nor did she cry, “My son, you have saved others, why don’t you now save yourself too?” Even though it isn’t difficult to understand that similar thoughts and wishes must have spontaneously come to her mother’s heart.

She no longer even asked Jesus, "Son, why have you treated us so?" As she did when, having lost him, she later found him in the Temple (Luke 2:48). Mary was silent. "She lovingly consented to the immolation of this Victim which she herself had brought forth," a text of Vatican Council II tells us. She celebrated his Passover with him.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa

Excerpt from Mary, Mirror of the Church, a Liturgical Press Book, (1992) p.99