Women of the Bible: Mary

Mary, Woman Open to God

In the midst of our people, you blossom like the flower which opens to the sun of God. You are supported by a long line of ancestors who transmitted the hope of a Saviour. People hail you, Mary, with the glorious titles of the litanies. In the Gospel, your son Jesus proclaims your great beatitude, “Blessed are they who receive the Word of the Lord and who live by it.” Your true greatness lies not so much in the fact that you bore your Saviour in your womb but that you bore him in faith. Elisabeth greeted you with the words, “Blessed is she who believed.” Mary, your whole being was open to the coming of God. You allowed yourself to be completely won over by Him. Without resistance or fear, you entered into full communion with Him. Your openness to Him in your flesh is the visible sign of the more radical openness you lived at the level of your being. Your are the good soil which “kept the word” and made it bear fruit. You risked your life on that Word. Without seeing, without understanding, you never went back on your commitment.

Mary, you are blessed among women! Introduce us to the path of inner silence and loving attention to the mystery. Make us discover the greatness of serving, like Jesus, Servant of the Father. Deepen our receptiveness and our longing for God who comes here and now. Incite us to risk saying yes with love, in all simplicity, even to the Cross, having no other guarantee than the words “Nothing is impossible for God”. Thus, the shadow of theSpirit can be over us and give life to Jesus in our world, according to his wish and our consent. Ask Jesus for this grace so that we may accomplish, as you did, our vocation of women - bearers of the divine.

Word of the Lord: Luke 11; 27-28. Luke 1; 30-38