XV — MARY’S PRAYER

Presence of God. — O Mary, you who were God’s faithful adorer, teach me to live in continual prayer.

Meditation

1 — To understand something of Mary’s prayer, one must try to penetrate the sanctuary of her intimate union with God. No one lived in intimacy with the Lord as she did. First of all, intimacy of mother: who can intuit Mary’s close relations with the Incarnate Word during the months she carried Him in her virginal womb? Though outwardly nothing distinguishes her from women of her condition, in the secret of her heart there unfolds the closest life of union that can exist between God and a pure creature. “Omnis gloria ejus ab intus” (Ps. 44, 15), all Mary’s glory and greatness is within, a true sanctuary that hides the Holy of Holies; Mary is the living ciborium of the Incarnate Word, a ciborium all throbbing with love, all immersed in adoration.

Carrying within herself the burning furnace of charity, how could Mary not remain wholly inflamed by it? And the more she is inflamed with love, the more she intuits the mystery of love accomplished in her: no one more than Mary has intuited the secrets of Christ’s Heart, no one more than she has had the sense of Jesus’ divinity, of his infinite greatness. Likewise, no one more than she has felt the consuming need to give herself wholly to Him, to lose herself in Him like a tiny drop in the immensity of the ocean. Behold Mary’s unceasing prayer: perpetual adoration of the Incarnate Word she carries in her womb; profound union with Christ, continual plunging into Him and being transformed in Him by love; continual association with the infinite homage and praises that from Christ’s Heart rise to the Trinity, and continual offering to the Trinity of those praises, the only ones worthy of the divine Majesty. Mary lives in adoration of her Jesus and, in union with Him, in adoration of the Trinity.

There is one moment in the day when we too can participate in the fullest way in this prayer of Mary: the moment of Eucharistic Communion, when to us too it is given to hold Jesus, living and true, in our heart. How much we need Our Lady to teach us to profit from so great a gift! May she teach us to plunge ourselves with her into her and our Jesus, even to being transformed in Him; may she teach us to associate ourselves with the adorations that from Jesus’ Heart rise to the Trinity and to offer them with her to the Father to supply for the deficiencies of our own.

2 — From Bethlehem to Nazareth, Mary lived for thirty years in sweet family intimacy with Jesus. Jesus is always the center of her attraction, the center of her affections, thoughts, and cares. Mary moves around Him, looks to Him, always seeking to discover new means of pleasing Him, serving Him, and loving Him with the greatest dedication. Her will moves in unison with Jesus’ will, her heart beats in perfect harmony with his; she “is participant in Christ’s thoughts, in his hidden desires, so that it can be said she lives the very life of the Son” (Pius X, Enc. Ad diem illum). As Mary’s life, so her prayer continues to be Christocentric, but Christ leads her to the Trinity. It was precisely the mystery of the Incarnation that introduced Mary into the fullness of Trinitarian life; her most particular relations with the three divine Persons begin when the Angel announces to her that she will be mother of the Son of the Most High and will be so by virtue of the Holy Spirit. Behold the Father’s beloved daughter, the Holy Spirit’s spouse, the Word’s mother, and these relations are not restricted to the period in which Mary carries within herself the Incarnate Word, but extend to all her life. Behold Mary “temple of the Trinity” (St. Catherine of Siena), Mary who, “after Jesus and undoubtedly with the distance that runs from infinite to finite, is the great praise of glory of the Most Holy Trinity” (E.T. II, 15).

Mary thus presents herself as the most perfect model of souls that aspire to intimacy with God and at the same time is their surest guide. She guides us to Jesus and teaches us to concentrate in Him all our affections, to give ourselves totally to Him, even to losing ourselves and being transformed in Him; but through Jesus she also guides us to life of union with the Trinity. Our own soul too is, through the grace that invests it, temple of the Trinity, and Mary teaches us to live in this temple as perpetual adorers of the divine Persons who dwell there. “I need make no effort,” said Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, “to penetrate this mystery of divine indwelling in the Holy Virgin; it seems to me I find there the habitual movement of my own soul, which was also hers: to adore in me the hidden God” (Letters). Under Mary’s guidance, may it be granted to us also to live in this attitude of unceasing adoration of the Trinity indwelling in our soul.

Colloquy

“I think, O Mary, what you must have felt when, after the Incarnation, you possessed within you the Incarnate Word, God’s gift! With what silence, with what recollected adoration you must have plunged into the depths of your soul in order to hold within yourself that God of whom you were Mother! It seems to me, O holy Virgin, that your attitude during the months preceding Jesus’ Nativity is the model of interior souls, of beings God has chosen to live within, in the depth of the bottomless abyss. With what peace, with what recollection you went and attended to everything! You divinized even the most ordinary things, since through all you remained the adorer of God’s gift!” (cf. E.T. Letters; I, 10).

“O Mary, You are God’s throne, the monstrance of his love. You are Jesus’ living monstrance, and when I adore Jesus in you it is truly adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed, adoratio in ostensorio. O Mary, all theology confirms this beautiful name of yours: monstrance of Christ! Monstrance of Christ in Bethlehem, in the Presentation, at Cana, on the Cross, in the Eucharist, in heaven. Yes, even in heaven; do we not say to you: ‘After this exile, show us - ostende - Jesus, the blessed fruit of your womb?’... O Mary, teach me to look at Jesus and to love Him as You look at Him and love Him; teach me to desire Him with your love, to give myself to Him, to be wholly his as You are his; teach me to adore Jesus with your own sentiments.

“O sweetest Mother, teach me to find Jesus and to pray to Him; fill me with Jesus, transform me into Him. O Mary, introduce me into contemplation of the life, work, and divinity of your Son. Be You the way that leads me to Jesus, the bond that unites me to Him and that, with Him and in Him, unites me to the Most Holy Trinity” (cf. Fr. Edward Poppe).