The Story

I wrote this song on April 12, 1995 while I lived in Osaka, Japan. I was there as a lay missionary, teaching in a Catholic elementary school which was operated by an order of Sisters. Once a week I would have dinner with a certain community of these sisters, and we would pray Compline (Night Prayer) in English, which always ends with a Marian hymn. Because we always sang the same one, they asked me to write a new one for the Easter season with "Hallelujah" in it. So, concretely, that's how this song came about.

But the only reason I was able to write about Mary and her relationship to the Paschal Mystery of Christ was that the painful difficulties of living alone as a foreigner in a strange land sensitized me to what it actually means to be a holy person. It means to be with Jesus, to stay with Him, in all the deep ways one is called to do so. Mary had the unique call to physically conceive God and bear Him in her womb, to nurse Him, to comfort Him, to be His mother in every sense of the word. In the midst of this task, she could remember Simeon's words from His infancy that a sword would pierce her own soul as well (Lk. 2:35).

I very much wanted no part of the suffering I was facing while living in Japan; it was bewildering, disorienting. But Our Lord directed my gaze consistently to His Mother's, to learn from her example of faithfulness and to see what loving Him really means.

Musically, this was one of the very hardest songs for me to record. I especially entrusted this song to the Blessed Mother by a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Good Hope in Champion, Wisconsin in August of 2011. One of the very last finishing touches to the entire album was the keyboard strings in the last verse and chorus of this song, which I played myself. With that, the song took exactly the shape I had been looking for.

The Lyrics

You watched your only Son bleed and die

Was your heart torn in two when from the cross He said goodbye

You saw His body which you brought to birth

Taken lifeless from the cross and laid in the earth

 

Holy Mary full of sorrow

Holy Mary behold your son

 

You waited through the long dark night of emptiness and pain

Shattered by what you had seen yet trusting all the same

That the Father who had called you to bear His only Son

Had not finished yet the plan He had begun

 

Holy Mary waiting in faith

Holy Mary behold your Son

 

When you saw His face again did your heart dance for joy

When you saw God’s very life that death cannot destroy

Hallelujah, He’s risen as He said

Hallelujah, your Son is no longer dead

 

Holy Mary full of joy now

Holy Mary behold your Son

 

Holy Mary full of praises

Holy Mary behold your Son

 

Pray for us now Mother Mary, behold we live in your Son

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