Though men failed in this crisis (of Calvary) there is no instance of a single woman failing. In the four trials the voice heard in Christ's defense was that of a woman, Claudia Procul, the wife of Pontius Pilate...On Calvary it is woman who is fearless, for there are several of them at the foot of the Cross. Magdalene, among them as usual, is prostrate. But there is one whose courage and devotion was so remarkable that the Evangelist who was there indicated the detail that she was "standing." That woman was the mother of the man on the central cross. Our Blessed Lord willed her presence there. Since he was the second Adam undoing the sin of the first, Mary would be the new Eve proclaiming the new race of the redeemed.
-- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
