Editor’s note: This is part 39 of a series, “The Kingdom of Grace.” Part 38 can be found here.
The single greatest help in the spiritual life, after the sacraments of the Church, is the prayer of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The life of grace flourishes in the soul in proportion to one’s love for her. Why? What is so wonderful about the Virgin? The answer is simple. God designed Mary to be our spiritual mother. She is the exemplar of everything good in the spiritual life, and a special help from heaven in all our efforts to live it. To see the point, let us meditate on the life of the Virgin.
Mary was born to pray. She was conceived without original sin and “full of grace” from the first moment of her existence. (Lk. 1:28). Sinless and without attachments, nothing held her back from progressing rapidly in the spiritual life. According to ancient tradition, celebrated to this day in the liturgy of the Church, Mary was presented at a young age in the temple in Jerusalem. According to the story in the Protoevangelium of James, when she was presented, she was so captivated by the sight of the temple that she never looked back. She was raised in the temple, they say, raised in the Presence. There she lived a life of interior silence and vigilance, and the eyes of her heart learned to gaze on God by the light of grace. She learned to listen to sacred Scripture and to see all things in light of the mysterious plan of God. Life in the temple was a special formation for a special mission in life. It acclimated her to the Presence. She had to learn to be at home with the Presence, for soon the Presence would come to be at home with her.
Mary was called from all eternity to be the Mother of God. At the annunciation, she became the new temple. The Presence came to dwell in her – first in her faith, then in her body, then in her home. She conceived the eternal Word in her womb and gave birth to him in Bethlehem. When Jesus was growing up in her home, she ate dinner with God. When she was with him at the wedding feast of Cana, she won from him the first of his signs. When she was with him on Calvary, she gave a silent fiat to his sacrifice for us all. She was there for his first breath on Christmas morning, and she was there for his last breath on Calvary. All through the years in between she was either with the divine Person in her home or with him at decisive moments in his ministry or with him in the Spirit from afar. She saw the Sacred Face more extensively than anyone, and more than anyone, she loved what she saw. Gazing upon the face of Jesus with ineffable love, and captivated by what she saw, Mary saw things into which angels longed to look (see 1 Pt. 1:12).
Contemplation was her area of expertise. Yet, she also walked the road of meditation. Mary “kept all these things pondering them in her heart” (Lk. 2:19). Mothers remember everything, it seems. With a mother’s memory, Mary retained the sayings of the angel Gabriel, the sayings of her cousin Elizabeth, the sayings of the shepherds, the magi, Simeon, Anna, and, of course, the secret sayings of Joseph. She remembered also his dreams and his docility to the Spirit. She also remembered the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh, and, of course, the prophesied sword of Simeon. She meditated on all of it so continuously and so profoundly that she was ready to hand it all on to the apostles and evangelists when it came time to proclaim the gospel to the world. She hands it all on to you, too, in all the mysteries of the Rosary.
How did Mary meditate? Pope Benedict XVI tells us she meditated on everything in light of the Old Testament and the whole plan of God (Verbum Domini, 27-8). Mary knew the Old Testament well. She must have known well the promises of God, for she recognized their fulfillment when she heard the words of her cousin Elizabeth: “Blessed is she who believed…” (Lk. 1:45). Mary’s ensuing magnificat reveals not only the grandeur of God, but the grandeur of her biblical understanding. She spontaneously thought in terms of Scripture, echoed it, sang it. Mary grew up hearing of the patriarchs and the passover, the law and the prophets, and the psalms of the people of Israel. Christian artists often depict Mary with a book in her hand. They are making a point. The point is that Mary practiced lectio divina. Even if she did not have a book before her, she remembered what she heard read aloud in temple or synagogue and she pondered what she remembered. We might say she was like the monks of later times except that all the monks of later times said they just wanted to be like her. Mary is the exemplar of a mind immersed in Scripture.
The life of the Virgin arrived at a turning point, however, when she stood on Calvary beneath the cross of her Son. There she heard with her own ears one of the seven last words of Jesus: “Woman, behold your son” (Jn. 19:26). In those words, in the midst of woe, she was commissioned to be the spiritual mother of us all. Like the other sayings she had retained so well, she remembered this word too. Yet, she was not a hearer of the word only, but a doer (Jas. 1:22).
For she joined the disciples in the Upper Room, and she prayed with them for the outpouring of the promised Holy Spirit. Surrounded by men who had abandoned her Son on Good Friday, she did not rebuke them or upbraid them but had compassion on them. She interceded for them, and she was heard on account of the immensity of her love. When the Spirit fell upon them at last, Mary also received an outpouring of the Spirit – a new outpouring. She became imbued with all the graces necessary to be the spiritual mother of us all, and to this day she mothers us in the Spirit.
From her place now in the Light, Mary sees you. She knows the designs of God for your life. She prays for you. From the first moment of your conception until now, she is at work to pray you through the trials you must undergo. For even until now she remains charged by God with the gift and the task of our formation by grace until each of us reaches to the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).
When the Lord Jesus spoke to his disciple at the foot of the cross, he spoke to us all: “Behold your mother” (Jn. 19:27). Jesus was teaching us how to live the life of grace. He was urging us to call upon Mary, to receive her, to take her into our lives, to entrust ourselves to her – to allow ourselves to be taken into the wide embrace of her love (see Pope Saint John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 45). So, let us abandon all to Mary. For the prayer of the Virgin is mighty. When it comes to the spiritual life, everything goes better with her than without her. Whether it be lectio divina, meditation, or Eucharistic Adoration, everything goes better when you do it with the Virgin at prayer.
Experience has taught us such lessons a thousand times and more. It is Catholic common sense. Everything in life goes better when it is given to Mary, placed in her hands, and taken into her Immaculate Heart. Some say there is no secret to the spiritual life, but I disagree.
The sweet secret of the spiritual life is the prayer of the Virgin.
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Father James Dominic Brent, O.P. is a Dominican Friar who lives and teaches at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Father’s House: Discovering Our Home in the Trinity. His podcast is called Contemplata — a podcast for contemplative souls. He posts select homilies, spiritual conferences, interviews, and radio spots on his personal Soundcloud site. He frequently lectures for the Thomistic Institute and appears on Aquinas 101.
Image: British Library on Unsplash
