Benedict XVI often calls to mind the way Mary meditated the Word: with attentive and patient heart.  ”The Magnificat is entirely woven with threads from the Holy Scripture, threads taken from the Word of God. Thus, it is  revealed that she (Mary of Nazareth) feels truly at home with the Word of God, comes out and enters it again with spontaneity. She thinks and speaks with the Word of God; the Word of God becomes her word, and her word is born from the Word of God.”[i]

A communitarian song

Surely the Pope knows well, as anyhow we, too, know, that the Magnificat is a prayerful and doxological expression not only of what Mary experienced that moment and throughout her life, but also of the symbiosis between her and the community of believers. In other words, this magnificent canticle is like an embroidery made with multiple hands, like the exultance of a multitude of believers, as the echo of multiple well-fused sounds: in her life and adventure of grace, Mary is the worthiest to pronounce it and the most conformed with the experiential theology it reflects: she is the voice of the whole Church made one with the canticle.

It is a perfect composition, with thousands of Biblical echoes, with suggestive and efficacious images, ample horizons, yet very proximate to the language, terminology, rhythmic doxology of the Scriptures. We can say that it is a personal as well as collective fruit, which resounds in the feminine soul and heart of Mary in a unique way, and rumbles like thunder  in the ethos of all the children descending from Abraham as well as of the children redeemed by the new Adam.

Luke has surely put in those words his own literary ability, but also the distance between the initial event and the material composition of the text have made possible the fusion of the initial emotion and the result of personal and collective lived experience, channelled in the texts and echoes. Thus, it truly becomes a song of nostalgia and hope, but also a prayerful and doxological answer for all that had been realised and had taken full and definitive shape. In fact, both the roots of the first covenant and the truth of the second one are evident in the most noteworthy nuclei of the text.[ii]

FROM AN ORIGINALITY OF LUKE

All of us know the parable of the sower: the three synoptic Gospels narrate it with their own shades (See: Mt 13,1-9.18-23; Mark 4,1-20; Luke 8,4-15), but also placing it according to the exigencies of different structures, specific of each Gospel. I want to reflect on the editing of Luke to highlight something that Luke alone does (Luke 8,4-15),[iii] and from which I draw the inspiration for some applications.

This parable is placed by Luke in a very special context; it is not by chance that the evangelist remembers how around Jesus there were men and women who followed him, sharing with him journeys, preaching and worries (Luke 8,1-3). Therefore, the premise of the parable –differently from the other two synoptic Gospels of Mark and Matthew- is that there is a mixed discipleship, made up of women and men, who are the most immediate addressees of the parable. Let us say more: they should be the visible form of the fructified seed sown by the sower. Of course, there is also “a crowd of people” that we see, (Luke 8,4), but this is a stereotype. The first and direct addressees, according to the sense of the parable, are the disciples, men and women.

After proposing and explaining the parable –as we know-  it includes all without the final of the percentages, speaking of the “fruit of perseverance” (karpoforoùsin en hypomonè). This is an expression of sensitivity and quality more than of efficiency, but the funny thing is that Luke concludes mentioning again particular persons, in the specific case at the presence  of the mother and brothers, who were trying to contact him without succeeding: “they were outside” (exo stèkontes), Mark says (Mark 3,31; see: Mt 12,46). This situation indicates both the pressure of the crowd, as well as the difficulty of the parents “to understand” the newness proposed by Jesus. Even John mentions that not even his own people understood and believed him (See John 7,3-6). To those who informed him that his parents were looking for him, perhaps with the intention of calming them amidst so much turmoil, Jesus answered “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the Word of God and put it into practice” (Luke 8,21).

This answer is drastic on the ones who may become part of the family of Jesus: from now, as I have said, it acts as a closing frame of the parable of the sower and its explanation.

However, we can have a glimpse also of something else. The mother and all his brothers, as well as whoever wants to be a disciple, man or woman, must accept a journey of listening and discipleship of a new praxis and new horizons.  Rather, he must take his life towards other relations that may regenerate him, that may consent a new ”family belonging”, truly a new identity. This takes place through an intense, obedient and regenerating listening to the Word of the Master, sown with generosity, and received with a “beautiful and generous” heart   (en cardia kalè kai agathè: Luke: 8,15).

Therefore, we can state that these words of Jesus do not express the will to keep a distance from his relatives; they rather express an invitation –keeping in mind also the feminine frame that opens and closes the passage of the parable- to become a fruitful womb of the Word, just as a woman experiences it with her motherhood, and to watch with hypomonè, that is, with careful and affectionate constancy, on the development of this mysterious seed, in a symbiosis that transforms both of them to become hope and rhythm of life.  

Therefore, to speak about welcoming the Word like Mary, and to incarnate it in the daily experience as the Eternal Word in a mysterious pregnancy worked by the Holy Spirit, after generating him as human life, she is called to set on an itinerary of discipleship, to be in her turn a disciple of her Son, who has by now become mature and a public Master. A disciple that is not made up only of a nearby presence, but also of a mysterious re-generation of the heart, thanks to the incorruptible seed of the new, living and eternal Word (See 1 Pt 1,23), to whom she herself has given human flesh. I shall limit myself to some moments of evangelical testimonies on Mary.

MARY OF NAZARETH, HEBREW IN LISTENING

We have no doubt that Mary had a Hebrew identity in all the implications that this statement implies: we proclaim her sometimes as “Daughter of Sion”, and this applies to the stock, the customs, the obligations and prohibitions; to the religiosity and sense of identity, therefore, also to the assiduity of listening to and obedience to the Word. A Hebrew man or woman without an “intense listening” to the Word is unconceivable.

Luke  does not describe the particulars of Mary’s Hebrew life, but there are elements that we can underline with a little of intuition and without pressure, and from which we can bring to emergence the typical characters of a Hebrew believer, whose physiognomy would not be comprehensible if not in the typical structure of the Hebrew life, with conviction and not by chance. The fact that Luke starts from the situation of Mary, a promised spouse of Joseph, and does not mind to say one extra word  about her infancy or about some aspect of her religious experience, does not mean that she did not have these qualities.

For a Hebrew person who knows the Scriptures, the sentence “do not fear”, which accompanies the wonder of the protagonist, is typical of Théophany and Mary shows to be aware of it. Her perturbation is the normal reaction of a Hebrew before an event of divine  revelation. It is not a simple shyness, a surprise, a moment of uneasiness: in her prolonged perturbation of asking herself, with a sense of fear and wonder, the meaning and the end of that particular salutation we find the classic reaction of the Israelite. It is the sense of a presence that dominates and calls to a task that surpasses one’s own views and projects.  Even more: in this case, a kind of surprising definition, kekaritomène, “imbued with grace” is ante-posed to “The Lord is with you” –a classic model of approach. This appears truly as an improper statement for a 15 years old girl.

It could be also a courteous expression, for instance: “how pretty you are, beautiful, splendid”, as some Eastern tradition uses to say. However, as all of us know, in the context it wants to say much more in quality and substance, as it is made clear by the repetition: «you have won God’s favour” (Luke 1,30: karin parà tò Theò), which implies not only complacency, but also: you have given joy, you have gladdened the heart of God, his eyes and his heart: you are loved and desired. 

         The answer of the angel could be commented in many ways. Doubtlessly, it could not be comprehensible without an intense familiarity with the Scriptures, of which it mentions very many allusions, which could not be ignored by a Hebrew woman who knows the Scriptures. I do not intend to touch this important aspect; I want rather to propose a complementary interpretation of the answer given by Mary to the angel: “How can this come about since I have no knowledge of man?” (Luke 1,34).

We know pretty well that, though bound by a promise of matrimony, Mary and Joseph did not yet live together, according to the Hebrew custom which foresaw the bond of betrothing and then, successively, the passage to co-habitation, with the nuptial procession. It is known that the traditional reading sees in this expression of Mary (épei andra ou ginòsko) – the resolution of virginity, supported also by the narration of the apocryphal writings on the girl Miriam and her dedication (always according to the apocryphal ) to the service of the Temple. A very beautiful and traditional expansion of the meaning, as we know, but perhaps in a somehow exaggerated measure, because if they were already in the process of betrothed-matrimony, it is clear that the intention of both of them was that of a normal matrimonial relation, including children. To think of a “betrothed spouse” that would exclude the dream of a spousal intimacy, as well as the personal availability to live it fruitfully, would have no sense. However, I wish to attempt another interpretation.   

THE ISRAELI-SPOUSE IS STERILE

The expressions of the angel, the first and the second  -taken afresh in the annunciation to Joseph (See Mt 1,18-25) – implied the entire history of Israel; in fact, some ten alluded parallel passages were heaped on it. It was the language of hope, but also of suffering because of the historic infidelities and grave failures. The spouse Israel had almost become sterile  because of the many failures, fruit of the political and cultural nuptials with the nearby peoples. It had no longer the fertility of the time of fidelity, and Mary is, just as if she identified herself with the daughter of Sion, sterile and without companion, without the joy of seeing a descendent of David, one from the house of Jacob, to guide the people towards peace and holiness.

In this perspective we can connect the perturbation of Mary, her intense reflection, but also her answer, with what Jesus will say of himself –or at least with what he wants to allude to with gestures and styles in many occasions- as already developed by the prophets on the loving and conjugal relation between God and Israel, with the betrayals and reconciliations (See Osea, Deutero-Isaiah, Ezekiel; and above all the Song of songs).

Mary feels this already secular sterility of the whole people as if it were her own, and immerses herself in it, welcomes it into her heart with the common suffering, together with the resistant hope of the pious Hebrews: as we shall see in Zachariah, Simeon, Anna and many more. Even the answer, or explanation of the angel, could be read in the same perspective: the symbology of the shadow of the Spirit, the holiness of God that takes shape and visibility, the highest dignity of the one who is going to be born, humanly impossible, the reminder of a sterility (that of Elisabeth) miraculously dissolved because of a divine intervention, are all schemes of the Old testament, which re-sound and re-link themselves to the worry of the “Israeli Spouse”  for the sterility and lack of company and vital intimacy

In the final answer of Mary, we find not only the personal availability of giving up herself totally to the exigencies of the Word of the angel, but also to shoulder the entire Word of the covenant of the Fathers, so that it may be fulfilled in her to the benefit of everybody. She declares her availability to see her existence entwined in a unique way with what she knows and meditates about the collective memory, the expectations, hope and trust. In accepting to be the servant of the Word –let it happen to me as you have said/génoitó moi katà tò remá sou – there is the availability to be the space for the fulfilment also of the old hopes and promises. In fact, it is word/event, in a dense sense, not only as a term, expression, sound or terminology.  

I see a confirmation of this in the greeting that the cousin Elisabeth shouts to her in exultance, “Blessed is she who has believed in the fulfilment of the words of the Lord (Luke 1,45). This sentence is at the end of the canticle of Elisabeth, in which she evokes various pieces of symbology of the Lord’s presence in the history of his people (first of all the passage of the Ark of the Lord, the joy for the pregnant womb, the exultance, the impulse of the Spirit, the “blessed among the women”, etc.). It is in this context that it must be interpreted, not like a personal praise addressed only to Mary. In this case Mary represents the pious and just Israelites who have believed in the faithfulness of God, despite the darkness and melting expectations; it is the spouse made fecund and loved of “eternal love”  (Is 54,8), no longer repudiated. Elisabeth becomes the interpreter of the certainty that God would be faithful to his people: and in Mary she sees and recognises that this faithfulness has become a gift for everybody, and in the answer of Mary she sees an answer to the advantage of everyone.

Only two women who had believed, meditated and lived the  fil rouge of the Scriptures, that is, two women who had listened to and loved, had identified themselves in the old promise, of which the Word transmitted from generation to generation was imbued, could see this unity, could go beyond personal joy, though legitimate and intimate.

EXEGETE TOGETHER WITH THE PEOPLE

I would like to comment the participation of the community to the silent and reflexive style of Mary in all the vicissitudes of the infancy. Luke notes down twice that Mary reflected and tried to interpret. After the visit of the shepherds, it is said that “Mary kept these things (synetèrei tà rèmata symbàllousa en tè kardìa) meditating them in her heart” (Luke 2,19); and after the finding of the boy in the Temple, “his mother kept these things (dietèrei panta ta rèmata) in her heart” (Luke 2,51). However, around the reflexive mother who watches over the memories with a heart that wonders, but seeks to find a unitary explanation, there are others who do the same thing.

For instance, when Zachariah started speaking again to pronounce the name John for his son, those who were close to him felt a sense of surprise and fear and “all those who heard  those words (ta rèmata) put them in their heart (Luke 1,66). Before going to Bethlehem, the shepherds discussed whether it was worthwhile  going “to see that word/event (to remá) which had happened”  (Luke 2,15), and then they spoke to everybody about what they “had seen and heard”  (Luke 2,20). We have also the collective stupor: first of all that of Elisabeth (Luke 1,41-45) for being visited by the Mother of the Lord, who appeared almost like a new holy Ark that crossed mountainous ways to go and share with her cousin the joy of an extra-ordinary motherhood that had benefited them.

Then the stupor of the relatives of Elizabeth and Zachariah  when the son was born and rejoiced with them (synèkairon autè: Luke 1,56). All those who heard the shepherds narrate their abnormal events were filled with wonder and stupor: “they wondered for the things that the shepherds said”  (Luke 2,18). Even more in the Temple, in front of the exultance of Simeon: mother and father were astonished (thaumàzontes) because of the things that were said about them” (Luke 2,33).

This is about the birth and the first successive days. But Mary reflected with a vigilant heart also after the episode of the finding in the temple. Here also we have the stupor and the wonder (existanto: can be translated with astonishment) of the masters in the temple (See Like 2,47). It is noted also that the parents did not understand the word (to rèma) which he had told them” (Luke 2,50) and soon after we read: “his mother kept the words/event in her heart”  (Luke 2,51).

I am interested to comment this collective attitude of stupor and reflection, of incomprehension and custody in the heart. This is not said only of Mary, as we have seen, but of many. This reveals an important thing: it was a holy Hebrew habit to deposit in the heart and to watch carefully with stupor all that happened. In fact all the events were together words and action, objective happening and mysterious signal on which to reflect, to find their connection in a horizon that would explain their meaning and finality. Mary lived with all the others the fatigue of understanding, accompanied by stupor, surprise, sense of fear and wonder.

This is the true Biblical way of welcoming the Word and keeping it in the heart, with the stupor generated by the sensation of one’s own frailty, crossed by the signs of the approaching visible and audible God, though He remains far beyond; it compels us to rummage in the heart, to dialogue in order to understand, to reflect, not to miss connections and unexpected reverberations. A people that reflects and questions itself, swept away by stupor while depositing the event in the heart ta rèmata, so that nothing may vanish, but every event may leave behind a lasting sensation, a discovery open to new horizons.

STABILITAS CORDIS

I see Mary in her attitude, surely, of a virgin-mother who does not pass over things superficially, but also as a companion and heir of the best Hebrew tradition, that of letting herself wonder and be surprised, of ruminating, remembering  and watching, to extract from all the events true meanings and inspirations of life. This is life according to the Word and the Spirit: a stabilitas mentis which becomes familiar with the events, and memorises well the happenings, seeking the bonds that make of it a project, a tissue, a complete and unitary event. A stabilitas cordis which transforms into a unique worry, a unique line of love and desire: this is the true heart of the Israelite, totally committed to the reverberation of the remata.

I would like to speak also of another stabilitas: it is the stabilitas corporis, namely the hidden years in Nazareth: this would complete the others, which we have of spoken above, giving a particular pregnancy to the three decenniums of the presence of Jesus in Nazareth. But the above exposition of a not often seen richness in the infancy events may suffice.