Learning to Contemplate like Mary

By Prof. Dr. Daniel C. Afonso · Updated 19 October 2026

Prayer and Contemplation

In the spiritual life, prayer and contemplation are as essential as the lungs are to physiological life. Prayer, which involves words, hearing and speech to a greater degree, is necessary, as is contemplation, which relates more to sight and, therefore, to the altar. To become people of prayer, to become like burning bushes, we need both prayer and contemplation. Prayer without contemplation runs the risk of becoming a purely cerebral and mechanical prayer, falling into the danger mentioned by Jesus of “multiplying words as the pagans do” (Mt 6:7). Only contemplation can enable a prayer that, although it involves reading, meditation and even spoken words, is carried out with interiority.

On the other hand, in the Christian vision, contemplation needs prayer, the word and listening. A contemplation that consists only of looking and concentration runs the risk of becoming narcissistic and a false mysticism. The true silence that contemplation seeks is not that of the desert, but rather the silence that makes the Word audible, that allows us to hear the Spirit who guides the ways of God and leads us to meet the Lord who comes.

The word “contemplation” is translated from the Greek term “θεωρία”. However, while “contemplation” derives from the Latin “contemplari”, “θεωρία” comes from the Greek “θεωρεῖν”. Thus, we find two meanings of contemplation: that of vision and that of the temple. However, both come together in a single meaning, that of the center: contemplation always starts from the one who contemplates, situated in a specific place that becomes the point of view from which he observes. Everything we see and recount is organized around this center. The temple, in turn, represents the organization of our lived reality around a center in which we place God.

In the Christian faith, the center of this organizing activity is the Cross, the throne of the sacrificed Lamb, the heart of the Church and of liturgical action, from which the gift of the Spirit flows. The Cross and Pentecost express and actualize the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ, making dynamic the centrality of faith and of the liturgy, which is an action of concentration and decentering in the life of the Church. On the journey of faith, the life of each Christian also participates in this mystery of ecclesial concentration and decentering.

However, the work of concentration and decentering is impossible without a solid center. This center is the presence of the Spirit of God in us, the sentinel of Jesus who reigns in our hearts from His Cross. Therefore, to be contemplatives of the living God, inhabited by Him, our listening must be attentive to the Word, which has become Parable in our time, and our gaze must be penetrating, capable of seeing the consubstantial Image of the Father in His Icon, that is, in every image visible to the eyes of flesh.

The Incarnation of the Word of God

We can carry out prayer and contemplation with Mary starting from the event of the Incarnation of the Word of God. However, this understanding is acceptable only if we recognize that there is no contradiction in the fact that God, who is pure spirit, can become incarnate.

How could the immaterial God become matter?

In the Prologue of the Gospel of John, we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was turned toward the One who is God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). This unusual translation highlights the similarity of attitude between the Word of God and the word addressed by God to His prophets (cf. Is 38:4; Jer 1:2, 4, 11, 13; Ezek 6:1; 7:1). The Greek expression πρὸς τὸν θεόν (= toward God) indicates the constitutive orientation of the Word of God, and this orientation remains in Him, even after the Incarnation, giving life to every word and gesture: everything comes from God and is oriented toward God.

In this Word of God, who is God, is contained, even before creation, the creative plan, called “divine wisdom” in biblical terms. We understand, then, that to be contemplative means to be wise, not according to the mentality of the world, but according to “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). This heavenly wisdom consists in discovering God’s plan in things and in human events, in seeing everything with the eyes of God, for everything is like a word of God, which comes forth from the one Word that became flesh and leads to the “understanding” of it.

We also read that God, who had already spoken in ancient times many times and in various ways to the fathers through the prophets, in these last days has spoken to us through the Son. This Son, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact expression of His substance, is the image of the invisible God, begotten before all creation (cf. Heb 1:1-3; Col 1:15). Therefore, the one Word of God, the Word who becomes flesh in the womb of Mary, is the whole expression of God and also the whole expression of creation: in Him is concentrated the meaning of all the words of God, both those that create and those that give meaning to creation.

From this follows an enormous consequence for the life of faith. When we read the Sacred Scriptures, we find “words”, but these words, now that the Word has become flesh, are realized, fulfilled, concentrated in the one Word that “pitched His tent among us” (Jn 1:14). Jesus holds the key to reveal the meaning of every word that came from the mouth of the patriarchs and prophets. Therefore, everything we read in the Scriptures is a word that comes from His mouth; it is His bread broken for us who unite ourselves to Him.

The Word of God, with the gesture of the Incarnation, becomes matter by taking on a voice and a face of His own, to be heard by our ears and seen by our eyes. He draws near to man, becoming a parabolic Word (that is, Parable), and shows Himself to man, becoming a visible Image (that is, Sign: an image that makes us think, through what it shows, of what is invisible and cannot be seen with the eyes of the body). With this, all of Scripture becomes parabolic, because the Word, which was turned toward God, in becoming incarnate also turned toward man, placing Himself beside man and thus becoming a Parable. We need to recognize this Word that lives beside us and that constantly addresses us.

It seems that the Word is beside us to make the journey of life with us, and we can only understand Him by agreeing to walk with Him. And only along the way, after the decision to adhere to Him, can we reach an understanding of Him through a relationship with Him. The parabolic dimension covers the whole revelation of God, accomplished through words and also through gestures and events. Everything happens as it did with the disciples of Emmaus, who heard the explanation of the Scriptures and recognized Jesus in the gesture of breaking the bread.

We can deduce that there are two consequences of the incarnate Word of God: He becomes Parable starting from the Word (a word always spoken beside man) and becomes Sign starting from the consubstantial Image of the Father (a historical image that shows Him in every event of human existence). And He radiates into many words and parables, into many images and gestures (ordinary and extraordinary), so that we may find our way that leads us to Him.

On this path toward the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, Mary is our mother and teacher, teaching us to use our ears and eyes to pass from the words to the Word and from the images to the one Image of the invisible God. Therefore, “Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear” (Mt 13:16). This reference to eyes and ears expresses an anthropological law: man opens himself to reality through the two windows of hearing and sight. In the philosophical tradition, hearing and sight are considered the aesthetic senses par excellence, which means that they are the bodily openings of the mind, which allow man to enter into relationship with the reality that surrounds him.

Mary and, consequently, the Church, in revealing herself and leading us to the Lord, respect this structure of ours. In the Church, alongside the tradition of the Scriptures, the tradition of sacred images developed, which in some way make the Word and the Image of God perceptible to the senses. We can broaden hearing with contemplation: a deep understanding of revelation cannot neglect sacred iconography.

At this point, we can understand Mary’s function in prayer and in the contemplation of the Word of God. Mary is always with Jesus; she is totally related to Jesus: just as the Word is totally turned toward the Father, Mary is totally turned toward the Son. Hence her exemplarity with regard to salvation. In keeping with this function, Mary shows us how to hear the Word through the words, how to see the consubstantial Image of the Father by looking at the icons of divine charity, and how to become dwellings of the Holy Spirit, of praise to God the Father in Christ Jesus.

No creature is as oriented toward Christ as Mary, who is prayer, an absolute directedness toward Christ. Mary also shows us how to become oriented toward Christ, how to direct ourselves toward Christ and how to be prayer and contemplation. For this, three stages are necessary, and Mary helps us to accomplish them:

• from the Parable to the Word, listening to the words of God.
• from the Icon to the consubstantial Image of the Father, looking at the icons (historical configurations of the saving events) with faith.
• from having an orientation of contemplation to being contemplation of the living God who walks with us and beside us.

Mary’s listening is the key to understanding the Word, while her gaze is the key to seeing the Invisible. With her hearing and her gaze, we can set our lives ablaze with the fire of the Holy Spirit and become those “burning presences” that the Father seeks, as Jesus revealed to the Samaritan woman: “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And the Father seeks such worshipers” (Jn 4:23).

Mary’s Attentive Listening

To understand the depth and breadth of Mary’s attentive listening, we must go down to the grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem and relive the visit of the shepherds to the manger of Jesus. The shepherds came and recounted many wonderful things that had happened that night while they were keeping watch over the flock. “And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:18-19). Here, Mary’s listening is meditation, and to understand this attitude of hers, it is worth knowing that “to ponder” translates a characteristic Greek verb, which means to gather, to join, to collect.

Mary practiced the meditation of the Sacred Scriptures and meditated on everything, because she gathered in her heart everything she heard and understood about God: she joined word to word, event to event, decision to decision, love to love. Thus, she entered ever more deeply into the mystery of God and into the understanding of His Word. All this work of meditation is marked by great discernment: Mary knows what to accept and what to set aside. This gift of hers is manifested especially in the account of the Annunciation (Lk 1:26-38). Mary hears and sees truly extraordinary things. And she is a devout woman, a lover of the Lord. She is called “full of grace”. An angel assures her that “the Lord is with her” and that she has been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah, who will sit on the throne of David.

However, Mary does not get carried away. One might say that all this does not go to her head, but rather that she takes an attitude of distance and submits the angel to a verification: “How can this be? I do not know man”. The angel answers her precisely, gives all the explanations she seeks, and concludes that the one who will be born of her will be conceived by the Spirit of God. Then Mary concludes her discernment, her meditation, accepting the angel’s words: if it is a matter of giving consent to the Holy Spirit, there is no problem, for I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me, then, as you yourself have said!

For Mary, that is enough. She is immediately able to reconstruct everything, from a verse to an entire psalm, from a detail to an entire episode, and this because the Word of God is familiar to her. Through meditation, slowly, Mary reaches the Word of God; she conceives Him in her heart even before conceiving Him in her womb. What is in the heart of the Son is in the heart of the Mother: Mary and Jesus live in deep harmony. Only in this way can we understand the episode of the wedding at Cana, Jesus’ reaction to Mary’s information about the lack of wine.

I think that Mary did not hasten the time of Jesus’ miracles, but that, in her prophetic spirit, she saw it coming and prepared everything so that the transformation of water into wine would be welcomed as a moment of divine mercy. The miracle of the wedding at Cana reveals the depth of Mary’s spirit of prophecy, deepened in the Scriptures and entirely turned toward the revealing Word. To Jesus’ remark, “My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4), Mary does not respond, but instructs the servants: “Do whatever He tells you”.

Mary knows that the hour is about to come. And this knowledge comes to her from her spirit of prophecy. Thus, we understand how our attentive listening to the Word of God becomes skillful: we understand the parables, words with collateral meanings that serve to reveal (to those who adhere to Jesus) and also to conceal (from those who do not adhere to Him), and then we combine words and gestures until we discover the one Word and the one Gesture: the Cross, revelation and gift of the Love of God.

One might say that Mary listens to the words and understands the parables through silence and vigilance, which make the Word audible, through wonder with the understanding of the Speaker, and through the memory that keeps, in personal intimacy, the journey with the Word. As a result, meditation produces a profound conversion of our freedom, which is the reason of our reason, orienting us completely toward the Word of Life. Meditation on the Word slowly turns into a relationship with the One who speaks and into contemplation with the One who, while remaining hidden, allows His friends to find Him and see Him: attentive listening to the Word gives rise to a gaze capable of penetrating the mystery.

Mary’s Penetrating Gaze

To understand Mary’s gaze, her capacity to enter with the eyes of faith into the mystery of the Love of God, we need to climb Calvary with her, to the foot of the Cross of Jesus. Here, Mary sees what others do not see: her prophetic gaze, “of the penetrating gaze” (Num 24:3), glimpses the Presence of all presences in the supreme manifestation of divine Love. We read that “all the crowds who had come to see what had happened returned beating their breasts. Meanwhile, the friends of Jesus and the women who had followed Him from Galilee stood at a distance and watched everything that was happening” (Lk 23:48-49).

The event of Jesus’ death is called by Luke “theory”, a Greek word with profound meaning: theory was the supreme explanation of everything. Luke finds in the Cross this explanation of everything and, with Luke, so does Mary, who sees what others do not see, because her eyes are washed by tears and torn by sorrow.

To penetrate the mystery of the Love of God with our gaze, it is necessary first for the mystery to penetrate our gaze, softening the heart. Prayer carried out through the gaze, both exterior and interior, springs from the supreme manifestation of the Love of God for man. The Cross thus becomes the heart of the contemplative life, because it is the place where Love is poured out upon us. The Cross is the Icon of God’s charity, as Saint Maximus the Confessor beautifully expressed it, the full gift of the Love of God to man. It is thus possible to understand what the Second Council of Nicaea (787) affirms in its dogmatic definition, when it specifies the type of veneration reserved for sacred images.

It is not, according to our faith, a true worship of latria, which is reserved for the divine nature alone, but a veneration similar to that rendered to the precious and life-giving image of the Cross, to the holy Gospels and to the other sacred objects, honoring them with the offering of incense and candles, as was the custom in ancient times. For the honor rendered to the image passes to the one it represents, and whoever venerates the image venerates the person of the one represented in it.

At this point, it seems clear that, if we want to mature in prayer, in the contemplation of the mystery of the Cross, which is the throne of the Lamb around which the Church gathers, we need to discover, perhaps rediscover, the iconographic tradition of the Church. There is an iconography in the Church of the East and of the West: the first is more figurative and finds its most characteristic expression in the painting (or rather, writing) of icons; the second is more abstract and finds its most characteristic expression in architecture (especially the Gothic).

Today, there are still unique opportunities: the cross, the crucifix, the paschal candle, the altar are images to be deciphered and interiorized, which enter as sacred images into liturgical action. There is also a rediscovery of the art of icons, Latin and Byzantine, which offer a singular opportunity for prayer. However, to “read” these images, a method is necessary; otherwise, we may fall into sentimentalism or into completely arbitrary attributions of meaning, which would not foster a wise contemplation, in harmony with the living tradition of the Church and in tune with the liturgy.

If an icon is understood, receiving its service of reference to the archetype, then it allows a profound lectio divina, at the service of the Word of the Sacred Scriptures that it makes visible. A positive method of reading icons can be summarized in five moments:

• theme.
• narrative.
• stimulus.
• distance.
• labyrinth.

Discovering the theme, even with the help of the inscription, means identifying the text of the Scriptures to which the icon refers. Each icon must make visible, with drawing and colors, what the Scriptures proclaim with words.

The theme is then expressed in the icon with a visual language, and this creates a kind of narrative, a sequence of images that make the icon a visible equivalent of the invisible reality to which it refers and in which one believes.

The stimulus refers to the function of colors, because color is a psycho-emotional stimulus. A correct reading of the icon makes it possible to identify the central color and the secondary colors, which harmonize like the notes of a piece of music. The chromatic aspect and its implicit symbolism are responsible for the therapeutic power of icons, which are capable of healing the imagination and freeing it from the aggressiveness of perverse images.

However, it is also necessary to keep a distance from the chromatic stimuli, because man is not only imaginative (night), but also rational (day). We are led to this operation by the discovery of the icon’s perigraph, of its subliminal geometric and abstract symbolism.

Each icon has its secret; it offers its treasure, beyond what is immediately seen. And this treasure suggests the symbol of the labyrinth, because reading the icon is like a path that leads to the treasure room, to the heavenly Jerusalem, as in the labyrinths we find in the corner of certain ancient churches, walked on their knees by penitents in place of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Each icon presents itself as a small iconostasis, which hides and reveals, to penetrating eyes, the mystery of faith. It is like a labyrinth to be walked on one’s knees, slowly, until one discovers the point of radiance that burns our gaze, making us think with love of what is real but invisible.

The fire that burns the gaze, once taken within, kindles the heart and warms prayer and contemplation. If an icon is not consumed by the gaze, it will remain an external surface, perhaps so beautiful as to be looked at repeatedly, until it becomes respectable. This could result in an idol, an impious manipulation of the icon.

Mary, the Contemplation of God

Mary fully realizes the divine theory, that is, the complete understanding of the Love of God for man and, at the same time, becomes an example of salvation, of the orientation of our existence toward God. In the Mother of Jesus, contemplation, as theory and as temple, becomes perfect. “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, and your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God” (Rom 8:14; 1 Cor 6:19).

Contemplation, as theory, acquires its meaning beside the Cross, from which Jesus pours out the Spirit. As temple, it acquires its meaning at Pentecost, which places Jesus at the center of the Church as the spring welling up to eternal life: “Jesus stood up and cried out in a loud voice: ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink, whoever believes in Me, as Scripture says: “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ He said this about the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were to receive. For the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified” (Jn 7:37-39).

Christian, evangelical contemplation is not philosophical speculation, but an event that involves the charity of God and connects the Cross with Pentecost, through “the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

Mary is the contemplation of God, because she is the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Mary is open to the Giver in the gift she receives. As a charismatic, she is continually transformed into a spiritual woman; she gives herself to the Giver, always receiving the gift of God. Thus, she is totally oriented toward God.

We should not be surprised to find Mary in the Upper Room, not far from Calvary, with the apostles and other disciples of Jesus, “who persevered with one accord in prayer, together with some women, among whom was Mary, the mother of Jesus” (Acts 1:14), awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus. In the Upper Room, Mary leads the prayer of the disciples of Jesus: it seems that, in another dimension, she continues the service she rendered at the wedding at Cana.

On Easter night, Jesus appeared in the midst of the Upper Room, with the doors locked, to free His disciples from fear, through the gift of peace and of the Spirit. Now we are again in the Upper Room and Jesus is not present, because He has ascended into heaven. However, Mary is there (sometimes iconographic art places her in the place of Jesus), leading the prayer of the nascent Church, gathering it around her as a center.

Mary can truly be the center in the prayer of the Church, because she is totally centered on Christ. She is completely instructed: Mary and Jesus are one. Mary is the temple of the living God, because in her womb, in her heart and in her spirit, the Spirit of God found a permanent dwelling. It is no exaggeration, then, to affirm that Mary does not pray, but is prayer. Mary does not contemplate, but is contemplation.

The Christian contemplative is the one who has centered and concentrated his whole existence on Christ, becoming the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. The dwelling is stable and the concentration is continuous. The contemplative lives and understands everything that happens to him in the correct sense, because in his heart the Word of God always resounds, keeping him in relationship with the Speaker.

At the same time, the contemplative, well centered on Christ, expands the presence of the Spirit who dwells in him, radiating the love of God in the Church and in the world. This clarifies a beautiful definition of contemplation by Saint Gregory the Great: “The contemplative life is to live the love of God and of neighbor with all one’s heart and with the sole desire of adhering to the Creator”.

Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian apparitions and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.

On Mary as a model of contemplation and interior life, see the Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus of Pope Paul VI.