XI — MARY’S HOPE

Presence of God. — O Mary, Mother of good hope, teach me the way of full confidence in God.

Meditation

1 — In the Magnificat - the song that welled up from Mary’s heart in her meeting with her cousin Elizabeth - we find an expression particularly revealing of the Virgin’s interior attitude: “My soul magnifies the Lord... because He has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaid” (Lk. 1, 46-48). At the moment Mary pronounced them, these words were the declaration of the “great things” God had wrought in her; but considered in the context of her life they express to us the constant movement of her heart, which, from full awareness of her nothingness, knew how to launch itself toward God with most intense hope in his help. No one more than Mary had concrete and practical knowledge of her own nothingness: she knows well that all her being, both natural and supernatural, would inevitably fall back into nothingness if God did not sustain it instant by instant. She knows that all she is and all she has is not hers, but God’s, pure fruit of his liberality. The great mission, the great privileges received from the Most High do not at all prevent her from seeing and feeling her “lowliness.” But this, far from dismaying and discouraging her - as often happens to us when we observe our nullity and misery - serves her as point of support for launching herself toward God with a swift movement of hope. Indeed, the more aware she is of her nothingness and impotence, the more her soul rises in hope. Precisely because, true poor in spirit, she has no trust in her resources, capacities, merits, Mary places in God alone all her confidence. And God, who “sends the rich away empty and fills the hungry with good things” (cf. Lk. 1, 53), has satisfied her “hunger,” has answered her hopes not only by filling her with his gifts, but by giving himself to her in the fullest way.

2 — Mary’s hope was truly total. We have a typical example in her conduct toward Joseph when he, having noticed in her the signs of a motherhood whose origin he did not know, thought “to put her away quietly” (Mt. 1, 19). Mary certainly intuited the state of soul of her most pure spouse, intuited the doubts that could pass through his mind, as also the risk she herself ran of being abandoned, while nothing had been said to her by the Angel that could reassure her on this so delicate point, and yet, full of hope in divine help, she in no way wished to reveal her secret. “In silence and in hope shall your strength be” (Is. 30, 15), the Holy Spirit said through Isaiah, and this sentence finds its most beautiful realization in Mary’s conduct. She keeps silent without seeking to justify herself before Joseph; she keeps silent because she is full of hope in God, totally sure of his help. Silence and hope allow her to rest totally on God, and thus, strong with his strength, she remains serene and tranquil in an extremely difficult and delicate situation.

We too hope in God, but our hope is not total like Mary’s. Precisely for that reason we do not know how to be totally sure of divine help and always feel the need to resort to so many little personal expedients to procure for ourselves some security, some human support; but since everything human is unstable and uncertain, behold that by founding our hopes there we remain ever agitated and restless. With her silence and her hope, Our Lady points out to us the only way of true security, of serenity and interior peace even amid the most difficult situations: the way of total confidence in God. “In te Domine speravi non confundar in aeternum” - I have hoped in You, O Lord, and I shall not be confounded forever (Te Deum). Yes, God will never disappoint our hope; and just as He sent an Angel to reveal to Joseph the mystery of Mary’s motherhood, so He will always find a way to help and sustain a soul that has totally entrusted itself to Him.

Colloquy

“O Mother of holy love, O our life, refuge, and hope, You know well that your Son Jesus, not content with making himself our perpetual advocate with the Eternal Father, has also willed that You engage yourself to plead for us the divine mercies. Therefore I turn to You and trust by your intercession to obtain eternal salvation. And I trust so much that, if my salvation were in my own hands, I would place it all the same in yours, because I trust more in your mercy and protection than in all my works. My Mother and my hope, do not abandon me! The pity You have for the wretched and the power You have with God surpass the number and malice of all my demerits. Let all forget me, but do not You forget me, all-powerful Mother. Tell God that I am your servant, say that You defend me, and I shall be saved.

“To help me, O Mother, do not go seeking virtues, merits; look only, I beg you, at the confidence I place in You and at the will I have to be better. Look at what Jesus has done and suffered for me, and then abandon me if You have the heart to abandon me. I present to You all the pains of his life: the cold He suffered in the stable, the journey He made into Egypt, the blood He shed, the poverty, the sweats, the sorrows, the death He endured for love of me. In your presence, for love of Jesus, commit yourself to help me. O my Mother, do not deny your pity to one to whom Jesus did not deny his Blood!

“O Mary, I trust in You; in this hope I live and in this hope I hope to die, always repeating: unica spes mea Jesus, et post Jesum virgo Maria, my only hope is Jesus, and after Jesus, Mary” (St. Alphonsus).