ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD

The fourth Sunday of Advent brings to our attention one of the most important parts of revelation: the announcement to Mary. Blessed Fra’ Angelico, through the ‘visible speaking’ of pictorial, reads this in a nuptial key; and so does poetry, with its evocative power. Let us think, for example, of Rainer Maria Rilke, who in a section of his Frühen Gedichte, addressing Mary, writes: God descended from his light and you were thirsty for him you, the most beautiful cup. But how did Mary, icon of humanity, manage to place herself before God, who asked her for a womb in which to become flesh, a heart to be loved, hands that caressed; before God, who came in the extreme need of a child, asking to find his root in her, to find life, a face and a word? Luke’s passage reveals to us the depth of Mary’s faith: an intelligent, questioning, free and fully available faith. Mary thus became the Tabernacle of the Most High, the new Zion, prophecy of the eschatological Jerusalem, in which there will no longer be any Temple, because God and the Lamb will be its Temple and its Light (cf. Rev 21,2-3).   On the eve of Christmas, we look to her and pray to her with a poem by Mother Cànopi:

Greetings, Mary! Welcome to the threshold of my waiting silence. Greetings, Mary! Not like the angel who came down from heaven, but like a pool of water at the fountain like a small mirror before the smile of your eyes in which – too large – is the secret of your Heart. I greet you, Mary! Vibrating in the sound of the Word that you welcome I pass through my silent sphere I cross the dark threshold to the light of your step (the first of the Word made Flesh) and I sing, O All-Joyful your hymn of thanks!

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

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey