In John’s Gospel, Jesus is never portrayed as a victim. He doesn’t need anyone to help him carry his cross. No one mocks him during the crucifixion. He doesn’t even cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It’s almost as if John is suggesting that we don’t need to worry about Jesus any more. Instead, when Jesus is on the cross, he begins to worry about those whom he is about to leave behind. What will happen to his disciples? Will they be able to continue his work, or will they end up being killed too? What will happen to his mother? Because, remember, in those days, a mother’s children were her sole source of income—her Medicare, her Social Security, and her pension.

One of the most convincing arguments that Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, has already died is because he is not present at the crucifixion. Only his mother is there. It is her second appearance in John’s Gospel. The first was three years earlier, at a wedding in Cana, when she informed her son that there was a sudden shortage of wine.

“Woman,” he had said at that point, “what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come?”

Now, presumably, it has. And when Jesus sees his mother standing at the foot of the cross near one of the disciples, he says to her, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he looks at the disciple and says, “Here is your mother.”

John is the only gospel writer who reports these words—and since he was the disciple Jesus was talking to, it makes perfect sense that he would be the only one who knew that Jesus had said them.

However, there may be more going on here than just a personal remembrance. The authorities who had had Jesus crucified believed that by killing him they would tear his family apart. And yet, here on the cross, Jesus quietly begins putting them back together again. “This is your mother … this is your son.”

He promised not to leave us any of us as orphans. And that promise is fulfilled when we start taking care of one another the same way that He took care of us!