A dense tradition of theologians and preachers and simple devotees, above all in the modern age, up to a few decades ago, has moulded the figure of the Mother of Jesus  as a model of devotion, associating her with values such as humility, modesty and interiority in listening

This last requisite is fundamental and has solid scriptural foundations, however, not when she is too hurriedly reduced to silence. It is the matter of an ascetical development that appears twice in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 19, 51: “Mary kept these things meditating them in her heart”. In her heart, therefore, we presumed, in silence. This silence, which in its strong valences is a theological-spiritual datus, has been unduly amplified, up to becoming a modus vivendi, made so much absolute as to constitute the characteristic of a whole existence. This illegitimate, and not disinterested, application demands a critical re-thinking: Both, the image of the Mother of Jesus, whom we welcome in us, and our idea of interiority, of spiritual life depend on it. 

Apart from the fact that the so called silence of Mary in the Gospel is rather silence on Mary on behalf of the evangelists, the expression “to meditate in the heart”, on which the image of the “woman of silence” is founded, is a Biblical expression often referring to just men, who usually live in the presence of God. The expression does not signify that the person it refers to has a taciturn temperament, but that he is used to pray and reflect.

Usually, he who is in the habit of reflecting knows how to be silent and how to speak, according to what the circumstances require and what the conscience, enlightened by the Spirit, dictates.

A POLYCHROME AND MULTI-SOUNDED SILENCE

Therefore, the evangelical figure of Mary invites us to reflect: on silence and its great value –not absolute, however- in the life of faith and in prayer, both personal and liturgical. If it is understood exclusively in an intimate and confused sense, with the refusal and fear of the word, it becomes a poor silence, without a unique sense, and not free from risks. Silences are not all of the same genre, of the same colour. There is the silence of recollection and expectation, that of welcome, of appropriation and of fullness; the silence that meditates and the silence that contemplates. Sometimes there is also a silence that dazes and disperses; in fact it is not enough “not to speak”, in order to create silence; we have silence superior to every word when we approach the threshold of the ineffable; but to reach that point, we need to have said  the words that are necessary.  

True silence is something different from mutism: it says opening, it helps the communication, it is animated by the Spirit.

Between silence and mutism there is, more or less, the same difference as that existing between the word and the chattering. Silence is a prelude of revelation, it means opening; mutism is shut up to revelation  and  to relation. True silence cannot help listening – and, therefore, from a certain viewpoint, cannot miss the word: with or without capital letter. Listening to and word are in reciprocal function.

LISTENING TO, ATTENTION, RELATION

The listening, sign and function of the person’s “open” nature, which allows to exit from self-referential solitude, is indispensable in a person –as well as in a relationship, in a human collective life…- harmonised under a “you”; the act of listening changes things in the one who listens as well as in him who speaks

It is superfluous to say that, as silence is not mutism, similarly listening is a quite different thing from being politely and apparently silent until the interlocutor finishes to speak (though even this rudiment of education is opportune and should be recommended, in a world where everybody speaks above the others and they take off the word from one another reciprocally, as we see in some T. V. debates): even “to stay listening” may be lived with a shut up spirit or in a defence attitude, in which case it is not a listening, but only its external imitation –if not its caricature. True listening to the other means to stop considering oneself and one’s own experience as the fixed norm of whatever is human. It is a ceaseless opening of the heart and a victory on fear; it is a work, which transcends the simple human power and puts the action of the Spirit at the first level.  

Prayer itself is, first of all, listening to the Word of God that resounds in the Scriptures, in the human history, in the individual conscience.  It means the discovery of each and every reality as word of God; to acquire the capacity of reading one’s own personal story as history of salvation, one’s daily life as a space of salvation.

OBEDIENCE AS LISTENING

In the Biblical tradition, faith –answer at second level- is born from listening, which in its turn, is born from the Word. The great interlocutors of God, in both the Old and New Testament, are, first of all, listeners to the Word. For the Israelites the fundamental religious command, equivalent to our symbol of faith, as well as to our Morning and evening prayers, is the Shema’ Israel («Listen, Israel,….”, See Dt 6,4-9; 11,13-21). The invitation to listening comes often in the prophetic exhortation and in the Psalms. Even the servant of the Lord is a believer who listens “like the initiated”, one whose ears have been opened by God (See Is 50,4-5). To listen to the Word of God and to do His will are communicating realities, indistinguishable, and in many places of the Scripture they have an equivalent expression. However, to listen seems to be more interior and deeper, more creative and global.

Jesus himself is, first of all, “one who listens”: he lives his life in a constant attitude of listening to and dialogue with the Father, for which He is before others transparency and radiation of the logic and style of the Father.

In the episode of Transfiguration according to Matthew, we hear the voice of the Father from heaven: “This is my beloved Son….listen to him”. Jesus says, “My mother and my brothers are those who listen to the Word of God and practise it”  (Luke 8,21). Once again  here to listen and to obey are indistinguishable.

They sound like words meant to relativise the figure of his mother, but it could be also a way of underlining her dignity, illumining her with a diverse light.

MARY MODEL OF THE DISCIPLE WHO LISTENS

For Luke the Mother of Jesus also is in a listening attitude; she is almost the prototype of the disciple.  The Apostolic exhortation Marialis cultus, 1974, which ratified the renewal of the official Mariology in the Catholic Church, says very well that, “Mary is the virgin in listening, who welcomes the Word of God with faith”; this was for her  a premise and a way to the divine motherhood, because, as St, Augustine intuited, she delivered in faith the One (Jesus) whom she had conceived in faith ….” (Mark 17….)

True, the traditional attention is paid, above all, on her fiat – filtered over the centuries through a uniquely receptive model of femininity- but we find important the whole dialogue of Mary with the angel, a symbolic-narrative expression of the “encounter with God”, which is in the depth of every authentic event of vocation. Mary is presented to us as a paradigm of listening, and the listening is also a very human habit to reflect, necessary (though not sufficient if it is alone) to constitute the listening of faith. Listening means, first of all, attention, orientation of the human spirit towards the project of God, up to the point of confluence between the human spirit with the Spirit of God.   

The ethical substance of the annunciation is that God treats Mary as a true and responsible person (this is a thing that we can verify in all scriptural narrations of vocation, but in this case in a special way): it needs her real consent, without compulsion, without excluding her interior disposition. 

Mary “assumes by the dialogue with God, gives her active and responsible answer” (Mark 37), that is, a neither reticent nor precipitous answer. We need an unreserved trust in the mystery of God who calls, in order to have the courage of leaving space for the newness, which transforms the existing situation deeply.

LISTENING, ATTENTION, SELF-REALISATION

Attention is the other side of listening. It derives from the Latin word  ad-tendere, that is, “to turn towards” ; for a believer it means, above all, to look at (something) with new eyes: contrary to banal curiosity, it is an attention paid to the mystery. Listening, welcome, attention are the priority declination of love.

To grow in the capacity of paying attention means to grow in personal unification. The listening to God and to others cannot leave self-listening out of consideration: this does not concern only the mind and it is not individualistic.

By narrating a double annunciation in the same chapter 1, the evangelist intends to establish a correspondence between the annunciation to Zachariah and that given to Mary; however, the superiority of the annunciation to Mary emerges clearly from the confrontation between the two episodes. As space for the listening to God, the simple house of Nazareth is superior to the temple in Jerusalem. In her dialogue with the angel, Mary is presented as a paradigm of listening, even in her need of understanding. The conclusive words of consent, “Here is the handmaid of the Lord….”, perceived for a long time in a distinctly servile sense, accentuating humility and docility at one-way sense, have, instead, a richer meaning. 

Apart from the fact that submission to God is quite different from submission to any other even legitimate earthly authority (in fact, it is the only one that the deeper and more total it is, the more it is freeing and springing autonomy), here the word handmaid calls to mind the figure of the Servant of the Lord. The “here I am”, said by Mary. reminds us of the great calls in the history of the people of God: the test of Abraham, the vocation of Samuel…The answer of Mary, on her side, means a continuity with the entire history of Israel, whose part she is, accepting for herself, in spontaneous awareness, a unique and fundamental role within this history itself. It is a humble attitude, without any doubt, but quite different from the traditional humility inculcated in the traditional ascetic formation of men and women.

The answer of Mary, in fact, denotes a self-awareness at high level, an exceptional availability to change (therefore a sense of identity and autonomy), a deep sense of created nature, an unreserved trust  and an aware choice of entrusting herself to God unconditionally; to define herself “handmaid of the Lord” anticipates prophetically a renewed style within the new humanity: a style founded on reciprocal service.