In the episodes of the life of Jesus’ mother offered to us by the Gospels, there seems to be a constant: a word comes before her, and she listens, reflects, asks questions or remains silent, and treasures everything in her heart.
Thus it happens in her encounter with the angel Gabriel; thus in her arrival at the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth; thus when the shepherds come before the newborn child; thus when she allows herself to be led into Egypt and brought back again; thus when she seeks, together with her relatives, to meet Jesus; thus beneath the cross, ending finally in the complete silence of the Gospels concerning her after Jesus’ resurrection.
And if she speaks first upon finding the child Jesus after three days of searching, it is to ask for an explanation. If at Cana she points out to Jesus that the family has no more wine to offer, it is because she has listened to an unspoken discomfort and simply mentions it to her son.
Yet Mary would have had much to say to the shepherds; she could have directly reproached her son for disappearing; she could have ignored the distress of the poor family at Cana and simply enjoyed the celebration; she could have cried out or protested beneath the cross; she could have instructed the hesitant disciples after the event of Calvary…
Making listening the first step of our daily life is not easy. Too many certainties prevent us from doing so; too many ready-made judgments cause us to interrupt the speaker immediately in order to give our own answer and opinion. In this way, the other person is diminished, dialogue is interrupted, and we remain chained to the past, without allowing any fresh wind to enter through our closed windows.
It is a great discipline to require ourselves, first of all, to listen: whether to a family member, a neighbor, a political opponent, a believer of another faith, or an immigrant. Long familiarity and attachment to certain convictions make us people full of answers and with very few questions.
Or else, not yet healed within ourselves, we force ourselves to let others speak, without truly listening to them. This also renders meaningless our approach to the Word of God, which then becomes more the object of our own words and requests.
In this month of May, we could ask Mary to intercede for us for the gift of listening.
To listen — and then what? Often our image of Mary has been limited to compliance, sweetness, submission, and silence. A model of womanhood against which many women have reacted, and which does not correspond to the Mary of the Gospels.
Mary listens, remains silent, asks questions, and makes decisions, as appears in the Annunciation; she rises and decides to undertake the long journey toward Elizabeth and Zechariah, and she responds to Elizabeth’s astonished words with a hymn that embraces all history — past, present, and future.
She welcomes and meditates on what she does not understand, as with the shepherds and the words of the child Jesus found in Jerusalem, and perhaps also with those words of Jesus declaring that great is not only she because of her motherhood, but anyone who listens and does the will of the Father. Just as she had done…
She remains silent when there is simply an inheritance to receive and a mission to embrace, as beneath the cross.
Mary draws consequences from listening. This is what is also asked of us: that the Word which reaches us — meditated upon in the biblical text, explained and made present by the Church, and mediated through listening to people and events — may open us to new steps in the unwritten adventure of life.
Mary, pray for us, that freed from haste and from the thoughts that crowd our minds, our ears may be ready to listen, and our hands and feet ready for action, so that the seeds God scatters day after day along our path may not die before they can grow.
