“HUMBLE AND HIGH”

Mary is humanity that finds itself before a God who wants to enter history. If the conception of Jesus occurs for her in a waking state, for Joseph it will be during his sleep, in a dream. Mary thus expresses her voluntary and enthusiastic adherence to divine will, while Joseph displays a more passive and accepting attitude. Both complement each other, and, after submitting their destiny to the Word, they generate the Son of God. Both are parents of Jesus, but in a singular way. Joseph is the adoptive
father. And it cannot be otherwise. A father, even if he begets, is always an adoptive father. In fact, a father must adopt his child. Some adopt him at birth, others after a few days, others when he begins to speak. A father, as Jewish tradition itself affirms, is not he who begets but he who welcomes and educates. Here, then, is the father who gives his child a name, provides for his sustenance, instructs him, calls him to a more intense life, and guides him toward a more secure desire. Joseph reminds us that there are never dreamed-of children, but children to whom the craft of life is taught.
Mary, on the other hand, is a virgin. Luke emphasizes this twice (cf. Luke 1:27). It is not so much physical integrity that is meant as a matter of fact. Being a virgin means being available. For the virgin, the Word comes before the flesh. And it is this complete availability that allows the Word of God to take on a human body, a face, and a name. This virgin, as today’s solemnity so well emphasizes, is full of grace (cf. Luke 1:28), that is, Mary is the beloved of God. In Greek, the term is kecharitoméne and expresses the election, the predestination of this young woman to the motherhood of the Messiah. Here we find the biblical-theological foundation of her virginal conception. We ask ourselves, was Mary aware of this great dignity, of this extraordinary gift with which God had looked upon her from eternity? Let us leave the matter to Bernanos who, in the Diary of a Country Priest, puts these illuminating statements into the mouth of the parish priest of Torcy: “The Virgin was Innocence. (…) The Virgin’s gaze is the only truly childlike gaze, the only true child’s gaze that has ever rested on our shame and our misery. (…) The holy Virgin had neither triumph nor miracles. Her Son did not allow human glory to touch her, not even with the slenderest tip of his vast, wild wing. No one has lived, suffered, died so simply and in such profound ignorance of his own dignity, a dignity that purely raised her above the Angels.   Because, after all, she was born without sin: extraordinary solitude! A source so pure, so clear, so limpid and pure that she could not even see her own image reflected in it, reserved solely for the joy of the Father—oh sacred solitude!” This is who Mary of Nazareth was. Alda Merini, in one of her poems, sings of her who was “humble and lofty beyond all other creatures” (Paradise XXXIII, 2): “Her virginity was so maternal that all the children of the world wanted to flow into her arms. She was fragrant like a prayer, provident like a matron; she was silence, prayer, and voice. And she was so chaste and shadowy, so shadowy and light, that all the spring equinoxes alternated over her”.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey