How is Mary “anticipated mercy”?

Mary’s gaze is “integral,” all-embracing. It brings everything together: our past, our present and our future. It is not fragmented or partial: mercy can see things as a whole and grasp what is most necessary.

At Cana, Mary “empathetically” foresaw what the lack of wine in the wedding feast would mean and she asked Jesus to resolve the problem, without anyone noticing. We can see our entire priestly life as somehow “foreseen” by Mary’s mercy; she sees beforehand the things we lack and provides for them.

If there is any “good wine” present in our lives, it is due not to our own merits but to her “anticipated mercy.” In the Magnificat, she proclaims how the Lord “looked with favor on her loneliness” and “remembered his (covenant of) mercy,” a “mercy shown from generation to generation” to the poor and the downtrodden. For Mary, history is mercy… Mary is the Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. 

Pope Francis

Spiritual retreat given on the occasion of the Jubilee for Priests Jubilee for of Priests – Second meditation (June 2, 2016) Zenit.org