Mary’s true happiness

For once, the gospel tells us of a woman's reaction to Jesus' preaching. She raises her voice above the crowd and exclaims: "Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts that nursed you!” (Lk 11: 27-28). Mary gave birth to Jesus and breastfed him: we can’t really do the same or share her amazing joy in doing this. But there are things in the daily actions and the attitude of Mary that we can imitate, and it is these things that Jesus wants to us to remember and make applicable universally. "Happy, happy all those who hear the word of God and keep it!"

Jesus is also describing Mary, but this is the portrait of Mary that Jesus prefers because as we can imagine in our minds the handmaid of the Lord meditating in her heart God’s words until they are fulfilled. Each son and daughter of God can say to themselves: "I can be like her. I will resemble her." The image of Mary that Jesus kept in his heart should look familiar to us and bear a family resemblance.

The woman in the crowd was not wrong in turning her thoughts from the Son to the Mother, attaching the Mother to the destiny of her Son; but she had misunderstood the level of true happiness and the true source of the Beatitudes, prompting Jesus to nuance what she said, and making a point that he saw as essential.

Mary’s true happiness, her imitable happiness, does not stem from family affection, good fortune, or pride. The true source of the Beatitudes, for her as for us, comes from accepting the words of Jesus, not just feeling his closeness.

Mary, the human person who was closest to Jesus physically and emotionally, was especially the one who lived his word the most intensely. This is what Elizabeth expressed, crying out, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, on the day of the Visitation: "Blessed is she who believed what was said to her from the Lord!” To which the Virgin humbly replied, hiding herself behind the power of God: "All ages will call me blessed, because the Almighty has done great things for me."

Brother John

Discalced Carmelite, Province of Paris, France