The virgin of the incarnation

PRESENCE OF GOD - Enter into the secret depths of your interior life, so that you may be my light and my model.

MEDITATION

1. “ It seems to me that Our Lady’s attitude during the months that intervened between the Annunciation and the Nativity is the model for interior souls, for those whom God has chosen to live within, in the depths of the unfathomable abyss ” (E.T. J, 10).

If Mary’s whole life was one of recollection and concentration on God, it must have been especially such at the time when, overshadowed by the power of the Most High, the Word became incarnate within her.

The Angel Gabriel found Mary in solitude and recollection. The Angel being come in, says the Gospel; the expression “come in,” leads us to believe that Mary was “within” her house. The Angel reveals to her in God’s name what will take place in her. “‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Lk 1,35). From that moment God made Himself present in Mary in a very special way, present not only by essence, knowledge, and power, as He is in all creatures; present not only by grace as He is in the souls of the just; but, far more, the Word of God was in Mary by “corporal presence,” as St. Albert the Great says.

Although retaining her humility, Mary was perfectly conscious of the “great things” that were taking place within her; her sublime canticle, the Magnificat, is proof of this. Nevertheless, she kept the great mystery hidden in her soul, hidden even from Joseph, and lived recollected in the intimacy of her spirit, adoring and meditating: she “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (ibid. 2,19).

2. God never “gave” Himself to any creature more fully than He did to Mary, but no one ever understood better than Mary the grandeur of the divine “Gift”; nor has there ever been a more loving, more faithful guardian and adorer of it. Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity says, “If you but knew the gift of God!... There is one created being who knew this gift of God, one who never lost a particle of it... the faithful Virgin, who kept all things in her heart.... The Father, inclining toward this creature so beauteous, so unaware of her beauty, decreed that she should be the Mother in time of Him who is His Son in eternity. Then the Spirit of Love, who presides at all the workings of God, came upon this Virgin and she uttered her Fiat! ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done unto me according to Thy word.’ The greatest of mysteries was accomplished, and through the descent of the Word into her, Mary was forever seized upon and held by God.

“In what peace, what recollection, Mary went to and lent herself to everything! How the most commonplace things were divinized by her—for she remained ever in adoration of the Gift of God!—yet that did not hinder her from spending herself externally when there was question of practicing charity. The Gospel tells us that ‘Mary...went into the hill country with haste into a city of Juda. ..and saluted Elizabeth.’ Never did the unspeakable vision which she contemplated within herself diminish her exterior charity for, says a spiritual writer, ‘If contemplation is directed to the eternal praise of God, it possesses unity and will not lose it’” (E.T. J,10).

COLLOQUY

O Mary, I love to contemplate you as you adore in profound recollection the great mystery which is taking place within you. You are the first temple of the Blessed Trinity, the first adorer of the Incarnate Word, the first tabernacle of His sacred humanity.

“ O Mary, temple of the Trinity! Mary, you bore the divine fire; Mother of Mercy, from you has blossomed forth the fruit of life, Jesus! O Mother, you are that new plant from which we have the fragrant flower, the Word, the only-begotten Son of God, because in you, fertile land, was sown this Word. O Mary, fiery chariot, you bore a hidden fire which was concealed beneath the ashes of your humanity. If I look at you, O Mary, I see that the hand of the Holy Spirit has inscribed the Trinity in you, by forming within you the Incarnate Word, the only Son of God. O Mary, I see this Word given to you, within you” (St. Catherine of Siena).

“O Mary, nearer than all to Jesus Christ, although at a distance that is infinite, you are the great ‘praise of glory’ of the Blessed Trinity. You were always holy, unspotted, blameless in the sight of the thrice-holy God. Your soul is so simple, its movements are so deeply hidden, that we cannot detect them. Your whole life may be summed up in these words from the Gospel, ‘His Mother kept all these words in her heart.’ You lived within your heart: so deeply did you enter therein that human eyes cannot follow you. When I read in the Gospel that you ‘went into the hill country with haste into a city of Juda,’ to perform an act of charity for your cousin Elizabeth, I picture you to myself as you pass by—beautiful, serene, majestic, absorbed in communion with the Word of God within you. Like Him, your prayer was always, ‘Behold, here I am.’ Who? The handmaid of the Lord; the last of His creatures, you, His Mother! Your humility was so genuine because you were always forgetful and disregarding of self, free from self. Therefore, you could sing, ‘ Behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because He that is mighty hath done great things to me.” (E.T. I, 15).

O my Mother, teach me the secret of your interior life; teach me to live recollected with God present in my soul. Teach me your silence, communicate to me your spirit of adoration; close to you, in your school, I too wish to be the little temple of the Trinity. Help me to detach myself from creatures and to live in silent, loving adoration of the Trinity in the innermost depths of my soul.