“[Mary] becomes an image of the Church as she considers the word of God, tries to understand it in its entirety and guards in her memory the things that have been given to her.” (Pope Benedict XVI).
I have been reflecting on the words of Saint Benedict XVI in his writing, “Jesus the Infancy Stories”m at page 33, where he writes, “[Mary] does not remain locked in her initial troubled state at the proximity of God in His angel, but she seeks to understand. So Mary appears as a fearless woman, one who remains composed even in the presence of something utterly unprecedented. At the same time she stands before us as a woman of great interiority, who holds heart and mind in harmony and seeks to understand the context, the overall significance of God’s message. In this way, she becomes an image of the Church as she considers the word of God, tries to understand it in its entirety and guards in her memory the things that have been given to her.”
And I have been reflecting on this representation of the Blessed Virgin as an image of the Church because it is very powerful.
In this short extract of text, the Late Pope Benedict XVI was writing about the Annunciation, which is the mystery that we reflect on as the first joyful mystery of the Most Holy Rosary. In this mystery we reflect on the moment when the Angel of the Lord appeared to the Blessed Virgin and “announced” at she would bear a Son and call Him Jesus…
“In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. You will conceive and give birth to a Son, and you are to call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.’ ‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.’ ‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May your word to me be fulfilled.’ Then the angel left her.” (Luke 1:26-38).
And today I have been thinking about that passage, because in all things the Blessed Virgin showed me how to be and what to do. You see, when the angel appeared to her, she was troubled at his words and sought to gain further understanding of them. And that is exactly what God calls on me to do… To take my troubles and seek to gain further understanding of His Will inside them.
In fact, today I have come to realise that that effort of mine to gain those further insights is perhaps the entire reason that God gave those insights to me after all…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.