Gn 3: 9-15.20
Ep 1: 3-6.11-12
Lc 1: 26-38
According to the Litany of Loreto, Mary is the “Seat of Wisdom”. She conceived in her womb, from the Holy Spirit, the Son of God who is the Wisdom of the Eternal Father. She bore Him ‘with love beyond telling’ and thus became the ark, the temple and the throne of the Incarnated Wisdom of God. She remains the seat of Wisdom from where Wisdom reigns over the world and the Church, over our persons and our communities.
Are we seeking Wisdom? Are we searching for Jesus? Let us go to Mary. Let us invite her to come to us. Let us learn from the Virgin most prudent, Virgo sapientissima, and from the Mother of Good Counsel, Mater Boni Consilii, the ways of prudence and wisdom. To this end, let us go, once more, to Nazareth.
Mary’s wisdom is first humble. When saluted by the angel, she is troubled, and she considers his words in her mind. She considers, she ponders; one could say she is discerning, “testing the spirits to see whether they are of God” (1 Jn 4:1). She is neither flattered by an unusual title such as “favoured one”, nor naively reassured by the use of a biblical phrase like “the Lord is with you”. She does not identify the Spirit of God because of the lovely words she hears, but by the Spirit’s irrefutable sign: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every Spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every Spirit who does not confess Jesus is not of God” (1 Jn 4:2-3).
No more than any member of the people of Israel could she anticipate the Incarnation – God coming in the flesh, becoming man, one of us. But she was so attuned to God’s Spirit by her Immaculate Conception, that she was predisposed to avoiding being scandalised by the Incarnation of the Son of God. There was, from the start, a complete harmony between the mother and the Son; between the wise Daughter of Israel and the Son of David, the new Solomon. Her Immaculate Conception made of her the perfect fruit of the Creator’s Wisdom. She, who did not know the struggle of the Spirit and the flesh, was not tempted to avoid the flesh. On the contrary, she was attuned with the mystery of God in the flesh.
Mary feels immediately at home with the mystery of the Incarnation of Wisdom. Humble, she offers a seat to the humiliation of Divine Wisdom. Human, she gives Jesus His humanity. Mary remains strictly within the remit of her condition of creature. Wisely, she remains in the flesh, and it is in the flesh that she welcomes Christ who comes into the flesh in order to save the flesh. Here we can already glimpse the ‘logic’, as it were, of her Assumption which follows directly from the harmony which makes the Incarnation possible. Mary’s Immaculate soul and reconciled body belong to the mystery of Jesus coming into the flesh; they logically follow Him, and the flesh He has assumed, into His resurrection.
Mary’s wisdom is humble and humane. It is also practical: “How shall this be, since I have no husband?’ – or, according to a translation closer to the Greek text: ‘since I am a virgin’. The answer is fully divine. Better: it is God Himself: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”. In her soul and her body, Mary becomes the temple of the Trinity. The Spirit and the Father come close to her, thus preparing her to welcome the Son, not only as a divine presence, but as God present in the flesh, entering the condition of the creature, making His the amazing process which leads from the conception to the newborn baby and the full man.
It is very wise, very practical, to rely totally – and solely – on God; to allow God to continue in our lives His mystery of Incarnation; to open oneself so as to become temple of the Trinity and alter Christus, another Christ, Christ continued in us, living in us – no longer us, but Christ in us, and we in Him.
Finally, the Immaculate Virgin’s wisdom is effective. With Mary, things get done; she fully offers herself to God’s work of salvation. She works with the Trinity mainly by submitting to the word of the angel. She does not answer: “OK. Understood. I shall do my best.” Instead, she consents to a higher action and enters the high dynamism of God Himself: “Let it be to me according to your word”.
It is very wise, very effective, to obey; to act as a servant of “Him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of His will”, who acts so wisely and so powerfully at the same time. Here we get to the root of Mary’s wisdom: she is filled with the fear of God. She responds to God in her place, as a little creature, as a humble servant, her two feet well grounded on earth, her heart attentive to the voice of the Creator and Saviour with whom she is in perfect harmony by reason of Her Immaculate Conception. She knows that God is God. She fears God and hopes everything from God.
And for this, we can be infinitely grateful. Today we praise the wise mother of the Incarnated Wisdom. We turn to the Seat of Wisdom, Mary, our mother, who introduces us into the divine and human mystery of the Incarnation of her Son, and thus prepares us for Christmas. She, herself, was prepared by God. Long in advance, God thought of her. He blessed her with a unique spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He chose her before the foundation of the world that she should be holy and blameless, immaculate, before Him. For she was to become the Mother of her Son and our Mother, the human Seat of divine Wisdom, the wise sister, mother, friend, intercessor of all those whom the Father chose before the foundation of the world to become fully sons and daughters in His Son, and to whom He gave her as a Mother – which was very wise indeed.