Stabat Mater
Attributed to Jacopone da Todi
(Translated by Edward Caswall)

in the video, performed by Marjorie Bunday, Chris Stroh, and Women of St. James Schola
 
 
At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last:
 
Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,
All his bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has pass'd.
 
Oh, how sad and sore distress'd
Was that Mother highly blest
Of the sole-begotten One!
 
Christ above in torment hangs;
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying glorious Son.
 
Is there one who would not weep,
Whelm'd in miseries so deep,
Christ's dear Mother to behold?
 
Can the human heart refrain
From partaking in her pain,
In that Mother's pain untold?
 
Bruis'd, derided, curs'd, defil'd,
She beheld her tender Child
All with bloody scourges rent;
 
For the sins of his own nation,
Saw Him hang in desolation,
Till His Spirit forth He sent.
 
O thou Mother! fount of love!
Touch my spirit from above,
Make my heart with thine accord:
 
Make me feel as thou hast felt;
Make my soul to glow and melt
With the love of Christ my Lord.
 
Holy Mother! pierce me through;
In my heart each wound renew
Of my Saviour crucified:
 
Let me share with thee His pain,
Who for all my sins was slain,
Who for me in torments died.
 
Let me mingle tears with thee,
Mourning Him who mourn'd for me,
All the days that I may live:
 
By the Cross with thee to stay;
There with thee to weep and pray;
Is all I ask of thee to give.
 
Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
Let me share thy grief divine;
 
Let me, to my latest breath,
In my body bear the death
Of that dying Son of thine.
 
Wounded with his every wound,
Steep my soul till it hath swoon'd,
In His very blood away;
 
Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
Lest in flames I burn and die,
In his awful Judgment day.
 
Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
Be Thy Mother my defence,
Be Thy Cross my victory;
 
While my body here decays,
May my soul thy goodness praise,
Safe in Paradise with Thee.
 
 
The “Stabat Mater” is a hymn about the Passion of Christ, and the Passion of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We hear it a lot during Lent and Holy Week. The poem is attributed to Blessed Jacopone da Todi.
 
Todi is a hill town about 30 miles from Assisi. Jacopo di Benedetto was born in Todi in 1230 and died there in 1306. Jacopo was a lawyer for his first 35 years – and then something changed. He decided to follow in the footsteps of St. Francis. He renounced his career and his inheritance and took to wandering the streets of Todi as a mendicant. As you can imagine, when this prominent citizen went “crazy for Christ” and began begging in front of the municipal building where he had previously worked, people took notice! 
 
Brother Jacopone, as he came to be called, began writing praise songs called “Laude.” His poetry was part of a movement across Umbria. Musical prayer had always been an important part of the liturgy, especially in monasteries and cathedrals. During Jacopone’s time, it also became an important expression of faith for the laity. People would come together in groups to sing and pray together in their own language. The songs—including Jacopone’s laude—spread from town to town through wandering minstrels who sang in public places. Jacopone’s poems in the vernacular are among the most important in the Italian language before Dante. Of course, he also wrote in Latin – as in the “Stabat Mater.”
 
This poem is so familiar that it can be easy to dismiss it as a quaint expression of medieval piety. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Gazing upon Mary, Jacopone recognizes that Mary doesn’t simply suffer; she shares in the Passion of her Son.
 
And Jacopone doesn’t stop at contemplation of the cross. The poem moves from contemplation to participation. Instead he asks, “Is there one who would not weep…can the human heart refrain / From partaking in her pain”? The poet doesn’t answer the question directly—he doesn’t need to. We know the answer. There are people who would not weep, people who avoid seeing the pain of others; and often, those people are ourselves.
 
Jacopone dares to ask to share the suffering of Mary – to weep with her, suffer with her, feel with her. And to share in Mary’s suffering is to share in the passion of Christ: “pierce me through,” “wounded with his every wound.”  
 
But why? Why ask for suffering? The most immediate answer is to be known by Mary and by Jesus. “Stabat Mater” ends with a prayer for the poet himself: “Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence, / Be Thy Mother my defence, / Be Thy Cross my victory.” He wants to share their passion in order to be united with them: Christ’s Mother will be his mother, and Christ’s cross his victory.
 
The poem moves from contemplation to participation – to compassion. Ultimately, I think the Stabat Mater is a prayer for compassion. The word “compassion” literally means “to suffer with.” The poem invites us to stand with Mary at the foot of the cross, and there to learn compassion. And there is nothing more timely than that. Pope Francis warned that one of the great failures of our civilization is the decline of compassion. He wrote: “Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.” (Evangelii Gaudium 54) But in the last judgment, he said in a homily, we will be judged not on our ideologies, but on our compassion.
 
This year, as we hear the Stabat Mater during Holy Week, let us make this heartfelt prayer our own, and ask for deeper compassion for all those Christ loves.
 
Let’s end our reflection with a little of Tartini’s wonderful setting of Jacopone’s text, sung by the Women of St. James Schola.

Corinna Laughlin