As those of you who have been here on other Good Fridays know, I give that my own interpretation. Some say that I am wrong: that when Jesus Christ said "Woman, behold thy son," He meant He was directing her attention to His friend, St. John, who would be a son to her now that He was going away. Perhaps. But I like to think the other way: that He was revealing to that mother of His the thing that should justify her motherhood, and her faith, and her love. He was saying, as it seems to me, things like this: "Behold, your Son, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh. Known and yet unknown. The Son whom the angel announced to you long ago among the Judean hills. The things that you have treasured and pondered in your heart must be brought out now to allow God to open to you their hidden meaning. For I am your Son, your first-born. In these years of wonder and strangeness I have not forgotten the love and care and protection given me. Through you I grew up in the knowledge of the Scriptures and the love of God's House. No, I have not forgotten those years in the carpenter's shop in Nazareth, and the laboring for daily bread. Neither was it easy to break away, and leave home, but God called me, and deep down in your heart you were glad that God chose me--it was the confirmation of all that the angels had whispered in your heart. You were proud of me, sure that God had somewhat in store for me that had never been known in the world, never known to the mothers of other sons. And then murmurs came to you of opposition, of the hostility of men high up in the synagogues, weird reports of my deeds, and strange teachings, and finally all that I said and did seemed to go against the authority and sanctions of your religion, and you were fearful of my mind. And now I have come to this disgraceful end. This cross is the fruitage of those thirty years spent with you and in the fulfilling of God's pleasure. This fruitage of the Cross is not the fruitage that God gives to the sons of evil as seems to be the just fruitage of these thieves crucified beside me. In reality this Cross is the crown of my life, and some day the world will see it, and take Me unto itself, and the Cross will have become a throne." It is the word of justification and comfort that Jesus gives the broken-hearted Mary. It is the word of God to woman. "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face." In Jesus, the son of Mary, we see what the world will be like 'when the years have died away.'