The Virgin Mother and the Mystery of Prayer

A careful read of the Sacred Scriptures helps us see that for the Handmaid of the Lord, vocal prayer engages her whole person. For this Virgin to say, "Let it be done unto me" means that her voice and lips, ears and breath, sight and touch, body posture and heartbeat perfectly expressed the surrender of her memory and imagination, thought and affection, judgment and intention in a decision of living faith. For the One who is "full of grace", all of these bodily and spiritual powers are caught up in her perfect act of prayer that expresses a living sacrifice and spiritual worship.

Only the Mystery of the Virgin could recieve the Word of the Father so perfectly and respond to it so completely. Blessed with every spiritual blessing from the heavenly places, the grace of God that filled her prevented any obstacle to her "fiat" showing God's absolute power and authority over sin. This gift of virginal purity indicates more than a passivity before God but an open readiness to welcome the Holy Spirit, a radical trust in the incalculable goodness of the Father, obedient receptivity to the unpredictable and tender wonder of His Son. At the same time, this blessing in Christ established her in such invincible integrity that she gave the whole mystery of her being to the eternal plan of the Father, even unto her very fecundity. This is to say, she was selfless before the Lord, dispossessed of self-concern, and thus, free to respond to Uncreated Love with the new love, the new fruitfulness that He was creating in her.

Here, in her "fiat", the most humble vocal prayer and the loftiest hieght of mystical contemplation coincide. Finally, a prayer that is made right and just under the shadow of the Most High, with the coming of the Holy Spirit and the conception of the Word of the Father. And, just as is so with every good mother, she keeps nothing of this gift of prayer to herself. Even more than any other mother, she everything she has is for her children. How she longs that we should avail ourselves of the movement of perfect praise, that we should allow it to seize our souls and raise us above ourselves, free of self, wholly for the praise of God's glory!

If her "fiat" is the perfection of prayer, a total surrender so perfect that she not only concieved the Lord in her bodily womb but even more, in her heart, then this "radical yes" is also a gift that she wills her sons and daughters to share with her. Who are these children but those who have chosen by faith to stand under the shadow of the Cross with her? That is, who does she not only love (for she loves everyone her Son loves and there is no one he does not love) but also teach, handover and give all her wisdom? More precisely, who are those who know her maternal tenderness?

It is all those who bear their suffering with love out of faith in Christ, no matter how imperfectly. These are those under the Cross with her. She hears her Son declare to her "behold your Son" even as she looks at these beloved disciples, and she yearns that these "friends" in whom she sees her Son, these beloved need the movement of prayer given to her because she was "filled with grace." Do not think that the tender affection of this maternal heart would hold back from asking her Son to grant such a favor to those He has identified with Himself.

Whenever these faithful friends of His call her blessed and take her into their own home as their Mother, she never fails to give this gift of prayer. It is a gift that takes up one's whole existence, that transforms one's life, that renews the mind, that gives sight, and speech, and hearing, and life! Hope explodes, knees are strengthen, and a spring of life begins to flow. This perfect prayer makes known the hidden will of God until it lives in the heart so intensely that one aches as if in childbirth for it to be realized. Speechless groans and sighs, wordless cries, blessed tears and even one's final breath are all caught up in this gift - but not even death and chaos can silence the great canticle with which it resounds. For these who know this prayer, what is recorded in the Scriptures becomes the lived reality in their hearts, a transforming mystery of divine fire, the extension of Christ's saving mystery in the world because they gratefully accept what the Crucified King has given them when He declared "behold your Mother."