When we encounter babies and their families, the baby has an advantage: it’s not the character of the baby, but of the parents, that speaks to the calibre of the family.
Mary and Joseph are barely described in the Scriptures. Many of us ache for more detail. How did Mary speak with Joseph? How did she look at him? Did she let the visitors hold Jesus that night in Bethlehem? With what words, if any, did she welcome the shepherd pilgrims? We know that Mary pondered all of these things in her heart which, frustratingly enough, is all we need to know. To experience Mary was to experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Mary’s presence tells us everything we need to know.
What made the Wisemen fall prostrate when they finally found Jesus at the end of their long search? We don’t know the precise reason for their certainty about his identity. But we do know that his mother was a remarkable person, the picture of human perfection in fact. Her person and her presence, the way she carried herself, and the way she observed and listened with her whole being; these things undoubtedly served as confirmation for the visitors that the trip was not in vain. Her person, combined with their strong yet mysterious resolve to follow that star, caused them to bow down in reverence.
Pierre Berulle, a 17th-century French mystic, writes that “the silence of the Virgin is not a silence of stammering and powerlessness. It is a silence of light and delight; it is a silence more eloquent in the praises of God than eloquence itself. It is a powerful and divine challenge in the order of grace.”
Mary knows that her loving presence is the right medicine for the human heart. She pondered in silence then and she still teaches us about the power of silent meditation. Our whole world is drowning in words, opinions, and theories. We have all seen how ineffective words can be at changing someone’s deeply-held convictions. Healing, conversion, and love come from a place that is far beyond the reach of words.
Mother Teresa writes about silence being “the beginning of prayer.” In silence, she says, things unfold as they should. For example, when Joseph momentarily questioned Mary’s character prior to their living together, St. Teresa of Calcutta writes that “one word from her would have cleared his mind; she did not say that word, and Our Lord himself worked the miracle to clear her name.”
There is a well-known story of Mother Teresa hearing complaints from one of her sisters about there not being enough time to get everything done in their exhausting work of ministering to the poorest of the poor. Mother’s solution? To add more prayer to their already prayer-drenched day.
“The more we receive in prayer, the more we can give in our active life,” St. Mother Teresa writes, “silence gives us a new outlook on everything. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say but what God says to us and through us.”
