Vigils Reading – Memorial B.V.M.

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Vigils Reading – Memorial B.V.M.

October 29, 2022

 

 

A reading about the silence and prayer of Mary,

from a book by Adrienne von Speyr. [1]

 

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.         – over –

 

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.

     [1] The Handmaid of the Lord, New York,1955, pp. 19-21.

 

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October 29, 2022
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