Vigils Reading – Memorial of BVM

MARY IS IN SILENCE

By Pierre de Bérulle1

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It falls to the Virgin to keep silence. It is her condition, her road, her life.

Her life is a life of silence, which adores the eternal Word. Seeing before her

eyes, at her breast, in her arms, this same Word, the substantial Word of the

Father, to be dumb and reduced to silence by the condition of his childhood, she

enters again into a new silence and is transformed by it after the example of the

incarnate Word who is her Son, her God and her sole love. And in that way her

life goes on, from silence to silence, from a silence of adoration to a silence of

transformation.

Mary is in silence, enraptured by the silence of her Son Jesus. One of the

sacred and divine effects of the silence of Jesus is to put the most holy Mother

of Jesus into a life of silence: a silence that is humble, profound, and that adores

the incarnate Wisdom with more holiness and eloquence than the words of

either angels or humans. This silence on the part of the Virgin is not a silence of

one who hesitates in speech or of one who is helpless: it is a silence more

eloquent, in its praise of Jesus, than eloquence itself. And so it is marvelous to

see that, in this condition of the silence and the childhood of Jesus, everyone

speaks and Mary says nothing at all: the silence of Jesus has more power to hold

her in sacred silence than the words of either angels or saints have the power to

bring her in and make her speak of things so worthy of praise, things that

heaven and earth are at one in celebrating and adoring.

The angels speak of these things among themselves and to the shepherds,

and Mary is in silence. The shepherds hurry away and speak, and Mary is in

silence. The kings arrive and speak, and make the whole city, the whole state,

all the sacred synod of Judea, speak: and Mary has withdrawn and is in silence.15

The whole state is moved, and everyone is astonished and speaks of the new

king sought by the kings, and Mary is in her repose and holy silence. Simeon

speaks in the temple, and Anna the prophetess, and all those who await the

salvation of Israel: and Mary offers, gives, receives and brings back her Son in

silence; so powerful and secretly impressive is the silence of Jesus on the spirit

and heart of the Virgin, keeping her powerfully and divinely occupied and

enraptured in silence. For, again, during the time of his childhood, we have

nothing but these words which have been brought to us about the conduct of

the Virgin and about her holiness in regard to her Son and to the things which

are reported of him and accomplished in him: “But Mary kept all these things,

pondering them in her heart”. There we see the condition and occupation of the

Virgin, there are her daily duties and her life in regard to Jesus during his holy

childhood