Vigils Reading – Memorial of BVM

THE SILENCE OF MARY

By Adrienne von Speyr1

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A life of faith is a life of silence. Mary’s existence as Mother is hidden in

a great silence. All around and about her is silence. People knew nothing of her

real life, of the mysteries of her virginity. Not even Joseph understood her. An

angel had to enlighten him about her mystery. The silence that surrounds her

is simply a reflection of her own silence. She did not become a subject of

conversation, because she did not talk about herself. And in that way she

safeguarded her secret. Later, too, when the Son appeared in public, she

remained silent because it was not her task or mission to speak. But in her

silence she participates in the dialogue between Father and Son which is the

very substance of prayer. She remained silent out of respect, and in order not

to drown the word of God with her own words.

Her silence also manifests her activity and her passivity, her strength and

her weakness. Her activity and strength consist in her self-control, her

weakness and passivity in allowing herself to be led. She is simply and solely

the instrument of God. Strength and weakness, doing and suffering, all the

tensions and stresses of life meet and join in her without occasioning the

predominance of any one in particular. The priority is always decreed by the

need of her mission. She did not cultivate, tend or encourage her good qualities

for their goodness’ sake (in the way that people do when they are conscious of

their own gentleness and are disposed to go further in the same direction). She

did not practice her virtues with a definite end in view; on the contrary, she

quite simply allowed God to decide everything, to decree everything in

accordance with her mission — and this is where her silence is so profound–

without losing or giving up any of her complementary qualities. In her, silence

is both complete self-renunciation and complete indifference.14

All this co-exists in her with a perseverance that knows no limits, because

her mission flows on accompanied by a parallel discretion that disturbs nothing.

All her qualities participate to some extent in the glory of her conversation with

the Angel: each decision is taken in the solitude and isolation imposed by the

relation of her soul to God. Discretion, in this instance, is but another name for

humility that asks no questions and never raises the dust. She asked the Angel

of God one simple factual question, and with that she became the answer to all

that God expected. Her life is therefore community in the Lord, solitude in God,

and this communal solitude is called prayer.