For with God nothing will be impossible! (Lk 1:37)
(http://www.domusviridis.org.uk/wol/1999/wol9912.htm)
These words were spoken by the Archangel Gabriel to Mary. I would like to quote the words of a Servant of God, Igino Giordani. He was a writer, a journalist, a politician, an ecumenist and patrologist; he is one the persons who most represents the twentieth century, a many-sided personality that has left deep imprints and opened prophetic prospectives on the cultural, political, ecclesial and social levels. (1984-1980). (http://www.scamat.it/news/iginogiordani.htm; http://www.iginogiordani.info/). The following quote reads better in Italian because it is closer to being poetry than pros. (http://www.indaco-torino.net/liturgia/08122005.htm)
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Full of grace, the Lord is with you! (Lk 1:28)
Mary enters into history while she prays. The archangel surprises her in prayer. Her joy is to pray: her life is to pray. To pray is to converse with the Lord, to effuse oneself in Him, to give oneself to Him. What does it matter the misery of the cubbyhole, dugout in the tuff, from walls which ooze with the water from the hills or burns under the sun on the plain, when against her, on the sand dunes, one can build the richness of the love of God, distilled in the colloquy between the daughter and the Father, between the handmaid and the King, between nothingness and All? Mary lost herself and found the Eternal.
And all of this for an intense heat of love, where she was transfigured at the feet of God. The prayer of Mary was transfusion of love. (…)
Mary is the whole religion, all of virtue: truly in her the love of God made Itself love of man and, in the ardor and light, generated the purity on the foundation of humility with the expression of wisdom, virtue protected by silence.
Marian love does not ask; it gives. It does not pretend; it considers itself in debt. If it is left alone, it endures; if it is ignored, it rejoices; if it is trampled on, it leaps in God. It makes of Calvary on earth a springboard to heaven. Where it is re-loved, it is well; where it is not loved, it draws nearer to the Crucified One.
It is not regretful if it is not understood. Hidden, it is more valid: as at Nazareth. It draws its value in seeing, with its help, the brother rejoices and is lifted up, even if the loving soul, in itself, is discouraged. What merit of love there is in making itself one with the one loved, even if the one loved resists unity. Its beauty is in submitting itself; it obeys, not commands; it disappears, it does not appear; it is silent, it does not defend itself. Like Mary: the handmaid of the Lord, in whom one sees that if one make oneself nothing, one thus obtains the All. For this making herself nothing, Mary, a humble daughter of peasant craftsmen, in a remote village, was considered worthy to become the Mother of God.
(Taken from “Mary the Perfect Model” (“Maria modello perfetto” by Igino Giordani).
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An Experience of Life:
I have on my study desk two very beautiful images, with captions of equal status: the Most Holy Trinity of the Jubilee (“Thou dost beset me behind and before” Psalm 139) and our Lady (“Mary, Mother of tenderness and mercy, you are the image and sign of the new creation”).
I draw from these icons for my daily prayer. In particular I pray to the Lord to help me to grow spiritually, in order to give witness in my life as a young person, in a world that is changing, according to the design that He has given to me.
To Mary, who knew how to recognize the will of God for herself, who received it with joy, who with courage brought it to fulfillment, I ask for her presence and for her love in order to accomplish the steps that bring me to the realization of the mission of God for me.
I am certain in this way to “contemplate the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living”, in the expectation of Paradise.
Franceso (Italy)
