The  Biblical presentation of Mary is for me, a Chinese, something similar to a painting on silk with the following typical characteristics: a few brush-strokes, plenty of white space, light colours, not totally defined contours, simple and unpretentious subjects, an atmosphere of sacred silence. The few brush-strokes fall harmoniously in appropriate points and spring out energies: thanks to them, even the white space becomes dense with meaning. The whole thing invites us to transcend, to launch ourselves towards infinity and to spy the mystery, experiencing the life to come and dilating in beauty

The few Gospel narrations of Mary, with the large space surrounding them, form something harmonious, dynamic and fascinating. De Maria numquam satis: it is not only our speaking of Mary that is inexhaustible, but also the contemplation of the few Gospel passages on Mary has no end. The following reflections are the fruit of the infinite contemplations of this very beautiful masterpiece of the Lord. They want to catch particularly the harmony and dynamism of the Gospel image of Mary, bringing to emergence her interior journey, her “peregrination of faith” in intimate union with Jesus.   

From the «quomodo fiet» up to «fiat»

Let us contemplate Mary the moment in which she receives the annunciation of the Angel. Mary’s answer does not spring out instantaneously and un-reflexive at the surprising message of Gabriel. Her first reaction is a disturbance, typical of anyone who is aware of being before something infinitely transcendent, a non suspected newness, whose sense one cannot catch. It is not the matter of a doubt flown down from incredulity, but rather a sense of wonder before the disproportion between the greatness of the proposal and the effective limitation of her capacity of realising it. It is the attitude of a humble, reflexive person, namely of a man who is aware of his own littleness and approaches the mystery with timidity and discretion, fully attentive to penetrate the sense. It is the feeling of the poor who knows how to wonder when he receives free gifts.  

The second reaction of Mary is an objection invoking light: Quomodo fiet istud? («How does this happen?”), manifesting the dilemma of her will to consent, without knowing how. She actually asks God what she is supposed to do, so that she may obey. The spirit of Mary is like that of the Psalmist when he prays God, saying, “Show me the way of your precepts, that I may reflect on your wonders (….) Give me understanding and I will observe your law,  and keep it wholeheartedly” (Psalm: 119, 27.34).

Once the angel has manifested how she is made to be the protagonist, place and witness of “great things”, Mary accepts with full availability, passing from the quomodo fiet, «how will it happen? », to the fiat, «let it be». The fiat of Mary, like that thought us by Jesus in the Our Father (Matthew 6,10), is a trustful abandonment and a joyful desire to fulfil the Will of God. With her fiat she sums up all the obedient people of the Old Testament and inaugurates the new people, ready to listen to the voice of God that now speaks through his Son.

The dynamic of Mary’s interior journey becomes even clearer if we consider the intentional confrontation made by Luke between two annunciations: one to Zachariah and the other to Mary. An aged, esteemed, righteous priest, an ideal representative of the Old Testament religiosity, Zachariah meets an angel in the temple of Jerusalem, during the cult. Everything underlines the sacred character and solemnity of the event: a holy man, in a holy place and time. Mary, instead, is an unknown girl from the despised city of Nazareth, out of which nothing good could ever come. (See: John, 1, 46), meets the angel in the simple, daily, domestic environment, but God puts the situation upside down. The angel came into her; Mary is the real temple of the Most High. She “has found grace in God” and the divine gift reaches her, not because she observes the law or as an answer to her prayer of petition, as the case of Zachariah is, but gratuitously. Even the conclusion of the narrations is different: Mary believes, opens her heart, thus co-operating with God for the salvation of the world, while Zachariah remains shut up in his dumbness, isolated, because he who does not believe in the design of God cannot even speak of it.

«Walking in a hurry»
and «keeping everything in the heart»

The care she takes in her journey towards Ain Karim, as well as the solicitude in the nuptials of Cana, reveal the active, enterprising, creative and resolute style of Mary. Her going in a hurry is an image of the missionary Church that, soon after Pentecost, invested with the Holy Spirit, sets on her journey to spread the good news up to the extreme corners of the earth. Paul knows this hurry very well: “the love of Christ urges us” (2 Co. 5, 14).

Mary does not look at the distances, at the eventual risks; she does not calculate the time or the fatigue. The ardour in her heart puts wings in her feet. She feels urged and sent by the Son within her. However, her walking is not just an external movement; it is a going, yet remaining in the Lord, a starting while dwelling in Him, a journey with him in her heart. It is her interior live that moves, directs, wraps and gives sense to her external actions; it is silence that makes the word mature. She joins a contemplation that encounters the mystery with the concrete action in the experience of service; she harmonises her highest elevation to God with the most concrete realism of the world and history.

An internal, lively activity corresponds to her external solicitude and work. “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke: 2, 19. 51). Luke has wanted to underline the reflexive and wise attitude of Mary before the mystery, by repeating this sentence twice. This expression opens deep rifts into the interior life of Mary, the wise virgin in the attitude of listening. Mary has a big heart, capable of keeping the wonders God operates in her and of linking within herself the past with the present, changing the whole into a seed for the future. She does not understand everything there and then, but welcomes everything into her heart, opens her mind to the mystery, allowing herself to be involved and respecting the rhythms of God’s historical revelation.  

Jesus teaches this attitude of Mary also to his disciples, “I have told you all these things so that when their hour will come, you may remember that I have spoken of them to you” (John 16, 14). «As for the part in the rich soil , this is the people with  noble and generous heart. who have heard the word, take it to themselves and yield a harvest through their perseverance”  (Luke: 8,15).

The disciples of Jesus, particularly consecrated persons, must learn from Mary, a wise teacher, the secret of the vital unification between interiority and activity, between the “to be “ and the “to do”, between “believing” and “working”, between “prayer” and “work”, between “memory” and “creativity”, between concentration “ and “diffusion of the Word of God; between keeping everything in the heart” and “walking in a hurry”, between “welcoming the Gift of God” and “making oneself a gift of God” for others.

«Seeing a sign” and “being a sign”  

Mary leaves from Nazareth and sets on her journey after a “sign” that the angel had given her,  «Your cousin Elizabeth  also, in her old age, has conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month” (Luke 1, 36). In the modest house of the Priest Zachariah, the aged Elizabeth waits for a son, given to her in a surprising grace. This is for Mary a proof of God’s power, for whom nothing is impossible (See: Luke: 1, 37).

When the incredulous Sara, wife of Abraham, laughed at the thought of being able to deliver at her age, the Lord asked her, “Is there anything impossible for the Lord?” (Genesis:  18,14). Isaiah invites discouraged people who feel crushed by suffering, to trust in the One who can do everything, “The arm of Yahweh is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear”  (Isaiah, 59,1).

Mary walks towards the mountain animated by her trust in God. In her explosion of joy, she will later say with the “Magnificat”,  that the Lord is her “Saviour”, the “Almighty”, a God who remembers his mercy and extends it “from generation to generation” on those who fear Him, (Luke: 1,47.49-50).

Mary’s trust is strengthened by the “sign” God had offered to her, but in reality, she herself is a sign of God given to humanity, “a sign of hope and consolation” 2  In fact, Mary signs the dawn that precedes the rising sun, signs the gushing in of salvation into history, signs the “fullness of time” (Gal 4,4). While Isaac, the child of Sara, and John, the son of Elizabeth bring the message that God can do everything, the CHILD OF Mary is the God who can do everything, the all powerful God made a hidden and weak man.

In Mary’s faith journey, there is a circular movement between discovering the sign of God in others and being the sign of God for others. It is a matter of a marvellous solidarity among the believers. The encounter between Mary and Elizabeth reveals it in the fullness of its beauty.

Mary and Elizabeth are two women tending towards the future of their womb, two women who guard within themselves an ineffable mystery, a stupendous miracle. The awareness of being the object of God’s particular predilection unites them; the common mission of co-operating with God for a grandiose project arouses their enthusiasm and makes them to explode in a blessing and a song of praise; the experience of a prodigious maternity joins them in solidarity. The miracle of God in Elisabeth is for Mary a “sign”, which helps her in pronouncing her “fiat”; now the miracle of God in Mary is a sign for Elizabeth, a sign that arouses a confession of faith in her. Thus the two women are reciprocal places of their discovering God, an epiphany of his greatness and a motive to praise and thank him. In recognising each other as sign of God, their densely intuitive communication, permeate with respect for the mystery, turns into blessing, song and poetry. The reciprocal confrontation of faith makes the reciprocal prophecy to flow, animated by the strength of the Spirit, and both of them become a sign of God’s solidarity with mankind.

From fiat up to Magnificat

While Mary crosses the crooked ways up the mountain, an interior itinerary of faith unfolds within her, going from the docile adhesion of the fiat to the joyful explosion of the Magnificat, from being visited by God to being a visit of God for others.

While going up the mountain, Mary feels that she is not alone. The Son of God is present, hidden in her. Luke describes this journey in a clear analogy with the transfer of the Arch of the Covenant towards Jerusalem, narrated in 2 Samuel 6, 2-11. The leaping of John in the maternal womb reminds us of David’s joy before the arch and the words with which Elizabeth greets Mary reproduce the exclamation of the king, “How is it possible that the Ark of the Lord comes to me?” The greeting of the angel in Nazareth, “The Lord is with you”, that Mary finds difficult to understand, now becomes a real experience and a deep conviction. Mary, Mother of the God-with-us, is now the ark of the new Covenant, the new abode of God, a new transparency of the divine presence among men, a new motive for everybody’s joy

With her walking along uncomfortable streets to reach the other in his own house, Mary inaugurates God’s style, the style of service, of surrender, of solidarity with people in need. The incarnate God becomes in her the God who enters the human fabric and permeates our daily life. Salvation acquires a domestic tonality. “Today I must enter your house”. “Today salvation has entered this house” (Luke: 19, 5.9): what Jesus will later say to Zaccheus, is somehow an anticipated reality through Mary.

Mary is a bearer of joy and hope. From Galilee to Judea she covers the same distance that Jesus would later have to cover.. Walking in a hurry up the mountain, Mary evokes the famous prophetic text,”How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messengers announcing peace….”  (Isaiah: 52,7). The good news brought by Mary emanates a contagious joy, it makes a child leap in the maternal womb, makes an age woman rejoice, “The young girl will then take pleasure in the dance, and young men and old alike; I shall change their mourning into gladness” (Jeremiah: 31,13). The children that are born and the aged who reach the fullness of their life meet, exulting and praising the same God “who loves life” (Wisdom: 113, 9).

Throughout her life, Mary goes on multiplying and spreading everywhere the pure joy that fills her being, the joy flowing from the greeting of the angel, “Rejoice, Mary” and made more intimate and deep by her fiat. At the birth of Jesus, this joy will reach the shepherds of Bethlehem through the annunciation of the angel, “I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by all people” (Luke: 2,10). When she takes Jesus to the temple, Mary will make the aged Simeon and the prophetess Anne to exult with joy. At Cana joy will not be missing in the nuptial banquet, thanks to the intercession of Mary with her Son. We could apply to Mary the words of the Psalmist, “The hillsides are wrapped in joy….they shout and sing for joy” (Psalm: 65, 12-14).

From fiat up to the magnificat becomes the exemplar itinerary of every Christian who fulfils his pilgrimage of faith from the initial adhesion to the project of God, towards the full rejoicing in the beauty of the project itself, passing through a gradual “ascent”: service, daily life, going with solicitude towards the needy, friendly encounters in the community, the missionary effort in bringing Jesus to the houses of others, proclaiming the good news joyfully arousing joy in the youths, that open their heart to life.

«Wrapping him in swaddling clothes»
and «seeking him anxiously»

In the narration of the birth of Jesus, Luke mentions the delicate gesture of Mary, “She gave birth to a son, her first-born, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger” (Luke: 2,7). It is a simple gesture expressing the tender and respectful motherly affection of Mary towards the baby, her son and Son of God. When the angel announces the good news of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds, he will give the following sign, “… you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger» (Luke 2, 13). Twenty centuries have passed and even today the baby is presented in this sign of motherly love.

At Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph find themselves involved in this mystery hidden for centuries in the mind of God, turned into reality before their own eyes. “The Word became flesh, he lived among us” (John: 1,14). Mary and Joseph are the first witnesses of this birth, which took place in humble and poor conditions, as first step of the “annihilation” (See: Phil. 2,5-8), which the Son of God chooses freely for the salvation of humanity. The baby is entrusted to their care and education. The tender love Mary expressed at the birth will accompany her son through all the phases of His life.

The long period of life hidden at Nazareth, during which Jesus prepares himself for Messianic Mission, is summed up by Luke in a few words. He narrates only one episode of the adolescent Jesus, the one at Easter in Jerusalem, when Jesus was twelve years old. The narration is framed within two verses underlining the idea of the growth of Jesus, “The child grew to maturity; he was filled with wisdom; and God’s favour was with him” (Luke 2, 40). «Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature and in favour with God and with people» (Luke 2,52). The Journey of the twelve years old Jesus marks a phase of Jesus’ growth, it is the anticipation of another journey to Jerusalem that will culminate to his own Easter.

The episode marks also the growth of his mother. Having found Jesus in the temple after three days, Mary asks him, “My child, why have you done this to us? See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you” (Luke 2,48)  The “why” of Mary sums up many interrogatives of mankind about the mystery of the cross and, in her anxiety, the anguish of very many persons who seek God with fatigue. Jesus gives two answers to his mother, “Why where you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke: 2, 49). He has a “must” in the design of the father; as he grows in age and wisdom, he grows also, and above all, in the awareness of his mission. Mary, too, grows in her welcoming the identity of Jesus –this son that she has wrapped in swaddling clothes at birth is not only her son- and grows in the awareness of being the depositary    of God’s mystery. She knew it already from the moment of the annunciation of the angel, but now everything appears more lively and real, and at the same time harder and more incomprehensible. Near her son, Mary also has a “must” in the things of the Father.

From fiat to do it

Mary has become the Mother of God because she “has believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Luke 1, 45): this is the interpretation of Mary’s fiat made by Elizabeth under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Augustine echoes her voice when he says, “Full of faith, Mary conceived Christ in her heart, before conceiving him in her womb” 3 The fullness of faith in Mary corresponds to the fullness of grace on behalf of God.  

Totally abandoned in God and committed to advance constantly towards the “peregrination of faith”, May grows slowly and deeply in her syntony with God. Because of her living faith, she reaches a strong relation with Him, an acclimatisation of her being with the divine sphere; she gets an intuition of God’s thought, a spontaneous discernment of his will, a feeling in herself the heart beats of God. Praising the faith of the ancestors in Israel, the letter to the Hebrews speaks of Moses as of one who lives as if “he saw the invisible” (Hebrews 11, 27). Having reached a degree of union with Christ to the point of saying, “it is not I, it is Christ who lives in me”, without rhetoric or ambition, Paul states, “We are those who have the mind of Christ” (1 Co. 2, 16). All this can be said also of Mary. We see her, at Cana of Galilee, simple, discreet, trustful near her son, in the certainty of being listened to, since she is intimately in syntony with him.

At Cana, Mary plays a prophetic role. She is the spokeswoman of God’s will, the indicator of the exigencies that must be satisfied, so that the saving power of the Messiah may be manifested” 4  The two words Mary pronounced at Cana  “They have no wine” (John 2,3) and “Do whatever he tells you”  (John 2,5), underline this dimension. Mary reads our human history to its very depth, can see unknown problems in it, picks up not yet verbalised groans, can see still nameless sufferings. She can see the essential knot of the jumble and presents it to her Son, the only one who can unbind it. Meanwhile, with a sure indication, she prepares the servants to welcome the divine help.     

«Do whatever he tells you», these are among the few words pronounced by Mary in the Gospel, the only ones addressed to men, for which they are justifiably considered as the “commandment of the Virgin». It is also her last word recorded by the Gospel, jus like a “spiritual will”. After this, Mary will no longer speak; she has expressed the essential idea, opening the hearts to Jesus, who alone has “words of eternal life” (John: 6, 68). In these words of Mary we perceive the echoes of the Sinaitic formula of the covenant. At the conclusion of the covenant the people promise, «Whatever Yahweh has said, we will do» (Exodus: 19,8; 24,3.7; Deuteronomy: 5,27). Mary personifies Israel obeying the covenant, not only, but she also is the one who induces no longer to the covenant, but to Jesus, from whom a new covenant begins as well as a new people. This appears even more clearly if we read these words of Mary as parallel with the last words of the Risen Lord in the Gospel of Matthew, «Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations (….) teach them to observe all the commands I gave you» (Matthew: 28,19).

Therefore, Mary leads us to follow Jesus, to obey his word and to consider him as an absolute reference. Mary helps to form the new community of Jesus, indeed she helps Jesus to make his friends in the sense revealed by him: «You are my friends, if you do what I command you» (John  15, 14).

The “Do whatever he tells you” pronounced by Mary is not just a theoretical invitation, but an exhortation matured in a personal experience. The word enters the life and the heart of the interlocutor only if it flows from the heart and the life of the person who speaks. Being expert in trusting the Word of God, Mary can help others to do the same. Her faith is contagious, the fiat deeply lived by her becomes a convincing facite addressed to others.

It is necessary, for us consecrated persons, like Mary, to have the aerials simultaneously tended towards God and towards history. Only a deep relation with God and a wise understanding of the world, can make our words and actions, the facite with which we help others, flow from our personal fiat in adhesion to God.

From «You will conceive a son»
To «Here is your son»

Mary is the Mother of God. She is the only one in the universe and human history to be able to say to Jesus what the heavenly Father tells Him, “You are my Son, I have generated you”(Psalm 2,7; Hebrews: 1,5). Mary, the Theotókos, the Mother of God, is the epiphany of one mystery, of the highest Christian paradoxes, of the most disconcerting surprise of love made by God to humanity. The unique and prodigious experience of generating the Author of life in the flesh has filled Mary herself with wonder. In fact, the Magnificat is an exclamation of wonder and joy, “The Almighty has done great things in me”. Involved in the same wonder, Elizabeth calls her “Mother of my Lord”. The Church recognises in this mystery the first and fundamental dogma on Mary and has been contemplating this dogma for centuries. An ancient Christmas Responsorial psalm exclaims, “He, whom the heavens cannot contain, was made man and closed himself in your womb”. Conceptual reasoning, hymns, poetry, sounds and music, colours and arts, nothing can ever adequately express the greatness of this mystery

However, to be mother for Mary is not a static reality, which one acquires once for good. Along her “peregrination of faith” she has made a journey of maternal growth and maturation, living a whole range of motherly feelings. There has been the silent wait in contemplation of the slow unfolding of the secret within her, the intimate joy at the birth and her tender love towards her newly born baby, the satisfaction and boldness in presenting him to the shepherds and the magi. There is the sorrow of the fleeing and the exile to protect and to save the existence of Him who is the Life of the world.  

In Nazareth, she experienced sweet intimacy. The looking for the twelve years olf Jesus who remained in the temple, was difficult and disconcerting; during the public life of Jesus, the unity between mother and Son goes on developing and becoming deeper and deeper. Mary is present with sobriety and discretion “not like a mother who clings to her divine Son, but as a mother who, with her action, favours the faith of the apostolic community in Christ and whose motherly function spreads, assuming a universal dimension on Calvary.” 5

The advancing in her peregrination of faith is for Mary, at the same time, an advancing in the development of her maternity. As the peregrination of faith culminates in the Paschal event of her Son, similarly the journey of maternity culminates in it. John Paul II speaks of Mary’s new maternity, “fruit of the new love”, which definitively matured in her at the feet of the cross, through her participation in the redeeming love of the Son”. 6 Reflecting on Mary, Augustine said in an analogous way that she is not only the mother of the Head, but also of the members of the mystical body of Jesus, generated by his redeeming death. 7 On the cross, the Son of Mary reveals himself as “the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Rom 8, 29); and around him all the “dispersed children of God” gather in unity» (John 11,52), and Mary discovers herself as Mother of a multitude of children. It is Jesus who entrusts them to her; Mary started her journey of maternity by accepting the mysterious project of God, “See, you will conceive a Son”; now this son proposes to her a new universal maternity. At Cana, Mary was in between, as a mediator between her Son and men; now it is Her Son who becomes a mediator between her and men, saying, “Woman, here is your son!”

The narration of John ends like this, “And from that hour the disciple took her into his home”(John: 19,27). From that moment the redeemed humanity welcomes its mother; Mary welcomes each son entrusted to her personally by her Son, allowing him into her motherly heart for ever.

Maria Ko Ha Fong
Pontificia Facoltà di Scienze dell’Educazione «Auxilium»
Via Cremolino, 141 – 00166 Roma