Vigils Reading – Memorial of the BVM

THE WOMAN OF FAITH
By Irénée Hausherr

The secret of prayer and of contemplation is faith. The Blessed Virgin Mary, the greatest of contemplatives, is she who had faith. She had great thoughts about everything. She encountered the First Cause in all things, spontaneously, without difficulty. She lived the religion of her people to the full. She related the slightest events of her life to her faith. This is what is called living by faith, or to use another term, stemming not from the Gospel but from Christian tradition: Living by contemplation. To contemplate is to see the infinitely Great in the infinitely small, or the invisible eternal in the visible temporal, and the First Cause throught the second causes.

There is another word, often used by spiritual authors to define contemplation. To contemplate is to traverse, to pass through the visible world in order to ascend to the invisible attributes of God. Mary did this from a spontaneous impulse, not without suffering. There were painful surprises, disappointments, fears: all the sorrowful mysteries. In the midst of sufferings as well as in the midst of joys, she gave herself to contemplation…

Let us hold fast to the faith of Mary! She no longer needs it in heaven! May she give it to us! May she help us to realize that faith is the victory over all the difficulties of daily life! May her faith remove the mountains that crush our heart and our soul. May it put into our spirit an habitual serenity that does honor to God.