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After working for eight years on this sculpture, he decided to destroy it, and would have smashed it completely had he not been stopped by his servant Antonio. Why did Michelangelo mutilate the Pietà? Was the stone too hard to work with? In his striving for perfection, was he dissatisfied with the work? Could he no longer bear the constant nagging of his servant Urbino to finish the work? What is the tormenting secret hidden in the Florentine Pietà?
 Michelangelo's private drawings express his inner struggle with the figure of Mary and his attempts to depict her as a loving mother figure. His biographers assume that as a child, Michelangelo felt resentment and frustration toward his detached mother. The image of the good and ideal mother, now embodied in the new woman, Mary, provides the emotional answer to his unrequited longings for God and love.
Mary is the "second Eve," mothering us, mothering Jesus, mothering His Church. Why? Mary attuned her will to God's. When the Archangel Gabriel asked Mary if she would become the "God-bearer" for all humanity, her yes turned the world upside down. Through that yes it became possible for Jesus to come into the world and bring about the potential of our salvation. It is in this way that Mary is the "second Eve." Adam and Eve rejected the will of God. Jesus accepted and lived out the will of God. Christ, the "second Adam," brings new life into the world and Mary, the "second Eve," mothering that new life.
For centuries there was tremendous study into the life of Mary, into the meaning of Mary in the Church. Theologians are studying Mary in new ways. Some theologians have put forth that Mary is present in every Mass. Jesus enters into a piece of bread, enters into a cup of wine as he entered the womb of Mary. He entered into that womb of Mary simply as a seed planted by the Holy Spirit to grow within her very being so that she was truly the mother of that child. Some believe that each time a priest says over a piece of bread, "This is My Body," and over a cup of wine, "This is my Blood," that action mysteriously is somehow possible only because of Mary, that her motherhood of the Christ Child, of the full-grown man, of the crucified and risen Christ, did not simply occur at a unique point in history, but that it occurs in the sacrifice of every Mass.
Mary, our Mother stands beside us when we receive her Son in Holy Communion, encouraging us to accept Him precisely as she accepted Him at the Annunciation, whatever the cost, willing to throw away whatever impediments may crowd our lives in order that we may truly say yes to Jesus.
When Christ came into the womb of Mary, he transformed us. In some mysterious way, he swept us into his divinity. So when we look at ourselves, we look at a mystery. There will always be in every human person the imponderable. Each of us is a mystery because when Christ entered the womb of Mary in a certain sense he took us all with him. At that moment, Mary became our Mother as well as his.
Michelangelo was cruel to the Pietà, but the Pietà survived. Bruised and scarred, it remained, a sublime monument to the torments of love and the yearnings for salvation of Michelangelo Buonarotti. All of our yearnings for love and salvation come to a focus in Mary.
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