Prayer and mystical life in Mary’s school

Introduction

In *Novo millennio ineunte*, John Paul II invites us to embark on a renewal of our lives, using Christian prayer as our guiding star, in all its beauty and demands, as a response to the profound spiritual thirst of our age, which leads many to seek esoteric paths of prayer and mysticism.In this context, we merely wish to allude to the theme of prayer and mystical life with a fixed gaze on Mary, even though the Pope does not name her in this context of his Letter.We wish to do so within this end-of-year encounter with Mary, not because we intend to expound the entire theme, much less all the reality of prayer, but because it seems opportune to reread what the Pope proposes to us with a gaze fixed on the Virgin Mother, especially in the mystery of the Incarnation, as he does, in the light of the Trinity of prayer and the theology of the saints.Prayer and mystical life can be akin concepts when it comes to highlighting that all prayer belongs to the mystery of Christ, has its root in us and in the Sacraments, and that everything is a gift, a grace of God for us, an opening of His gifts to our poverty. In a proper sense, mystical life is the supernatural charismatic experience of the Christian life granted to some because they have a particular personal grace in the Church, a specific charismatic task, and at the same time because God grants them certain gifts of intelligence and experience of the Christian mystery to be qualified witnesses in the Church of the mystery of salvation they live, almost seeing the invisible.In Mary, in fact, everything is mystical and everything is normal. Her experience is at the same time of the highest supernatural quality, of a clear and distinct evidence, but everything happens in the normality of the mystery of the Incarnation. Mary’s mysticism is not phenomenology, as that of some saints, but the mysticism of the Incarnation itself, of revelation and the manifestation of the mystery of Her Son. And all is lived by her with a disconcerting simplicity.These two progressive moments of spiritual life, prayer and mysticism, will also be the two fundamental points of our exposition, but without losing contact with the Virgin Mary, even though, as I have said and repeat, to avoid misunderstandings, the Letter of the Pope does not make specific references to Mary’s prayer and mystical life.In our case, it is due to make a simple and sober reference to this aspect of Mary’s life, which remains for us a sure guide even in our changing world.Prayer and Mystical Life in the Lives of ChristiansA first part of our reflection must be dedicated to what the Pope indicates as the path to prayer and mystical life.The Path of Prayer and Christian MysticismIn the wave of the path to holiness, the Pope proposes a privileged path for Christians, that of prayer. He indeed wishes a life of Christian holiness that shines by the gift and art of prayer: «For this pedagogy of holiness there is need of a Christianity that distinguishes itself above all in the art of prayer» (n. 32).Regarding these simple words, a kind of miniature symphony on Christian prayer unfolds within the grand symphony of spirituality for a new millennium. In fact, Pope John Paul II dedicates some incisive paragraphs of theological, spiritual, liturgical, and pastoral character to the urgency of prayer in the Church, which could mark a turning point at the beginning of a new millennium, renewing the fabric of Christian life at personal and communal levels.“Recomstart from Christ” is the title of the third part of the Apostolic Letter. It is precisely to recommence from the contemplative prayer of his face, from the filial feelings of his prayer, and from the sharing in which Christ continues the mystery of his uninterrupted dialogue with the Father in the prayer of his Church and of each of his faithful.But we might wonder: is it fair to speak of “the art of prayer”? Although the answer seems evident, and there also exists a recent book by an Orthodox spiritual writer, Caritone of Valamo, with this fascinating title, someone could contest that one could speak of an art, almost as if the delicacy of learning imbues value to the qualification of gift that is proper to Christian prayer. The Catholic Catechism defines prayer first of all as a gift, covenant, and communion (nn. 2559-2565). But the expression “the art of prayer,” besides presupposing that it is a gift, fruit of the action of the Spirit who, as the supreme artisan, shapes words, thoughts, affections, also indicates the beauty of its inspiration and the joy and effort always present in a learning that is also artistic. That is why speaking of the art of prayer is fair: “Prayer should not be taken for granted.” It therefore requires the fineness of a pedagogical itinerary that starts from the contemplation of Jesus in prayer. This is the beauty of the art of praying, which should be cultivated and led under the inspiration of that finest master of prayer, the Holy Spirit, who suscites and shapes it in us. Perhaps for this reason, some spiritual masters try to speak of prayer as the harmonic notes of a lyre, which the Holy Spirit makes resound in the heart of the faithful. Gift and effort, predisposition and learning, beauty and joy of praying, docility to the action of the Holy Spirit: this is the art of prayer. Teresa of Jesus explicitly speaks of the art of praying when she refers to the form of contemplative prayer, which is oriented towards contemplation.But to enter into the truth of Christian prayer, the Pope proposes that we look to Christ and make our prayer authentically Christological and Christocentric, since in him we have the master, the model, and he who still prays in us and continues his prayer on earth.Imitating Jesus, the prayerful One par excellence, assessing the importance of prayer in his Trinitarian and filial experience, learning from him how to pray, following his counsel, is the guarantee of an adult Christianity, of a daily renewed faith in its sources. That is why the pedagogy of holiness proposes itself as a renewed pedagogy and mystagogy of prayer to always and anew learn to pray, according to the most genuine and original Christian sense.It is, in fact, a lesson never fully learned, an art that can produce masterpieces of continuous and ever bolder experiences of communion with God and with brothers, as the lives of great prayerful people demonstrate.But it is necessary to make dense, as the Pope does, the sense of prayer in a strictly Christian sense. Prayer, therefore, as communion, dialogue, that is, mutual communion and permanence of one in the other and “symbiosis” reciprocal with Christ, according to Johannine terminology. “In prayer, that dialogue with Christ develops which makes us his intimates”: the life of Christ becomes our life, and our life his life. A reciprocity and an exchange of gifts between Christ and us, in the common breathing and beating of the heart of our prayer, which cannot fail to be also his prayer, if the same vital principle is the Spirit of Christ, who allows us to say: “Abba, Father!” (cf. Rom 8:15; Gal 4:4).Some theological indications of this art of prayer are offered to us by the Holy Father to deepen the sense of authentic Christian praying as reciprocity between Christ and us, a theological condition that constitutes as “the very substance, the soul of Christian life,” the breath and inspiration of all authentic pastoral life.Above all, it is due to highlight its Trinitarian dimension. In one of the many Trinitarian formulas that are typical of the Charter, a mature fruit of the theological preparation for the Trinity in the great Jubilee, it is affirmed: “Realized in us by the Holy Spirit, it opens us, through Christ and in Christ, to the contemplation of the Father’s face.” The Holy Spirit, “the diamond point of the Trinity,” carves into the depths of the heart, soliciting and promoting its prayerful response. The Son is the mediator who prays for us and in us. The Father is the source and term of our contemplation and prayer, as of Christ: “Abba, Father!”After a pedagogical indication, we are presented with the concrete realization of this trinitarian dimension in its typically and ecclesially formed manner, which is proper to liturgy, the summit and source of the life of the Church. Liturgy, in fact, is a dialogue of words and actions between God and His people. At the heart of liturgy, which is the celebration and Eucharistic prayer, we find an exemplary and authentic trinitarian prayer that is also reflected in other liturgical expressions. An prayerful experience that should model, as a school and mold for Christian life, the expressions of personal prayer.From these trinitarian and ecclesiological premises arises the seriousness and fertility of a prayer that forges a personalism of faith and life, unique and unwavering, even though we can also pray for others and with others, without renouncing the personal relationship with the Trinity. It is about regaining a vital Christianity that finds its roots, plunges into the sources of its faith as a vital response to God, is regenerated in the grace of its own baptism, but is also realized in the secret of its own Christian personality: the living presence of the Trinity, communion with Christ, the living water of the Spirit poured out in our hearts.With this robust prayer theology, at the same time trinitarian, ecclesiological, and anthropological, the Christian of the third millennium can face all challenges and offer new responses.References to the Virgin Mary could be immediately cultivated, due to its affinity with the experience of Christ. In Mary, prayer is also trinitarian; her prayer is already the prayer of the nascent Church, and with the nascent Church, her personal relationship with the Trinity is realized in a personalism of faith and love, in being before the Trinity and in communion with it, to receive and give, to welcome and bear fruit maternally from the grace of the trinitarian communion that was communicated to her.From this discourse on prayer, the Pope guides us towards a much-needed discernment in our time to discover a “diffuse demand for spirituality and, consequently, a renewed need for prayer.”It is something that lies within the folds of our historical experience, which translates into a restlessness of tone and matter, and sometimes appears as admiration and attraction exerted upon many Christians by the deeply religious experiences of ascetic and meditative practices from other world religions. A notable spiritual challenge has invaded our Western world and comes from other ascetic and mystical traditions, especially from non-Christian Eastern ones, now diffused in our multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multicultural world. From these premises arises a new interest, though sometimes merely culturally, in both Christian and non-Christian mysticism.The fascination with religious sense, reaching lofty peaks in the testimony of mystics from some religions and offering attractive answers, poses a challenge to Christians. It is therefore time to study, promote, and bring closer Christian mysticism and mystics, who, moreover, uniting heaven and earth, the divine and the human, without confusion and separation, offer the genuine sense of the Christian mystery, lived and taught by the great Christian mystical tradition of the East and the West.This is also a Trinitarian mysticism, starting from faith and becoming experience: “We who have the grace to believe in Christ, the revealer of the Father and Savior of the world, have the duty to show to what depths the relationship with him can lead.” From such mysticism, the Pope offers us this beautiful Trinitarian description, as the peak of the prayerful journey: “It shows how prayer can progress, as a true and proper dialogue of love, until the human person is totally possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrant to the touch of the Spirit, filially abandoned to the heart of the Father…” (n. 33). Beautiful and profound words, founded on the language of John the Evangelist, theologian and mystic par excellence, to whom the Pope refers to recall Jesus’ promise: “Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love him and will manifest myself to him” (John 14:21).Mysticism is, therefore, the epiphany of God’s love in Christ, grace and availability, a gift from God absolutely free, an expression of His freedom in giving Himself, but also an opening to response. It is the gift of two freedoms that give themselves to each other, reaching the peak of espousal union, which is not absorption of one by the other, but personal communion that maintains the difference between the Creator and the creature.The Pope does not hesitate to reaffirm some fundamental concepts of classical mysticism. Mysticism of the two boundaries: the human boundary of kénosis, which experiences the dark night. The supreme boundary of the divine gift to creation, which is espousal union, as taught by some great masters, so close to the experience and teaching of the Pope: Christian mystics explicitly named, such as Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross.Here is mysticism, seen as the blossoming of the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer, varied in the symphony of human feelings, transfigured by grace. Prayer that is at once thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening, ardor of affection, up to that enamorment, indeed, that “enamorment” of the heart for a God who is Love and is the Beloved.Yet, a balanced and realistic mysticism, capable of making the great ascensions to God and no less demanding descents of love and service to brothers, now seen with God’s eyes. A mysticism that becomes a construction of history, according to God’s design, as taught, for example, by Saint Teresa of Ávila in the Interior Castle.We cannot ignore at this point that there is a universal opening to Christian mysticism. The question becomes clear if we refer to a fundamental number of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which speaks without ambiguity of this vocation of Christians, due to their creation, baptism, and Eucharist, to participate in the life of Jesus through participation in his mysteries.The Catechism states that: “The progress of the spiritual life tends toward a more intimate union with Christ. This union is called ‘mystical’ because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments, ‘the Sacred Mysteries,’ and in it, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls all of us to this intimate union with Him, even though only some are granted special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life, in order to make manifest the free gift made to all” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2014).This magisterial text is of utmost importance for the Christian, also to understand the true meaning of prayer and the mysticism that can be learned in the light of Mary.The first fundamental affirmation is that prayer and life tend toward the maximum union with Christ. Union in the reality given to us in the mystery, that is, the free gift of communion of life with Christ, which is realized through the sacraments, especially baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist, initial and initiatory sacraments. Mystical life is therefore the life in Christ, the deeper it is, the more intimate is the communion with Him. But mystical life is the life of Christ in his trinitarian dimension, as his life and prayer were, communion with the Father in the Spirit. The Christian mystical life is not first and foremost the one of mystical phenomena, but the grace of Christ, the identification with Him, the immediacy with his mystery: life given to all and therefore possible for all.Already Saint Teresa of Jesus, at the end of her Interior Castle, after having spoken of the mystical graces received, affirms that God cannot give us a greater grace than to give us the life of His Son. Therefore, the highest graces are, in various ways and with different nuances, communion with the life of Christ, participation in his mysteries in action, in suffering, in love, in service. The Virgin Mary, for good reasons, is at the peak of this mystical life, as the closest to the mystery of Christ. Her mystical ones who have experienced these graces, and they are not lacking in the Church, this means that they become witnesses to their brothers and sisters of the truth of this participation in the very mystical life of Christ.Mystic life is, therefore, a life of Trinitarian communion, of identification with Christ and His mysteries, of the fullness of ecclesial life. The figure of Mary, as we shall see, illuminates the sublimity and simplicity of Christian mysticism. Mysticism of communion, mysticism of understanding the truth, but always within the framework of faith, identification with Christ in the splendor of Tabor and in the abyss of Calvary, mysticism of passive and active participation in salvation, that is, knowledge and experience of being saved, consciousness and commitment to collaborate in salvation. Just as the Virgin Mary.In reality, Mary’s mysticism is the most complete and real participation in the mysteries of Christ: it is a Trinitarian mysticism, real, lived in everyday life, not like that of a mystic who participates at a distance in the mysteries of Christ. For her, participation, the highest, as a wife and as a mother, is total. That is why Mary is a sure guide for us. Her life was always an experience of the mystery, but lived in the normality of her maternal existence, beside the Son, living in him and through him. The reference to the mystery is constant in her experience. With her example of a mysticism entirely Christocentric and Trinitarian, she guides us towards the mystery of Christ as a fundamental reality of true and authentic mysticism, of a life in Christ, of living with him and as him.(A pedagogy of prayer)This exciting perspective, initially an open path to all, crowned always by the grace of a God who opens His treasures to whoever He wills, as He wills, and when He wills, must be fully explored, fully discovered, and followed step by step in the classic and modern spiritual itineraries, through a renewed education in prayer.To achieve this goal, the Pope launches a challenge, inviting to an unavoidable pastoral plan that can grow the Church in depth and breadth: «Our Christian communities must become authentic “schools of prayer”! Thanks to God, in the Church of the late 20th century and early 21st century, there is a renewed teaching on prayer that has blossomed into many valid experiences of Christian prayer pedagogy: some inspired by the classic and almost innate method of “Divine Reading” (lectio divina), others marked by the mystical tradition of the Eastern Christian Church, others by the great renewed and simplified tradition of various methods of mental prayer, and yet others, with a necessary and vigilant discernment and guidance, taking what can be put into practice from the traditions of the great Eastern religions.The Magisterium of the Church has offered Christians in recent times valid indications of content and method, of orientation and discernment. Above all, in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Letter *Orationis formas* on some aspects of Christian meditation (15.10.1989), which the Pope cites in a footnote, and also in the splendid fourth part of the *Catechism of the Catholic Church*: two texts that can very opportunely serve as a guide for all people and Christian communities who wish to learn and transmit a renewed pedagogy of Christian prayer in all its forms, through the paths of meditation, contemplation, and mysticism.The call to prayer, like the vocation to holiness, is universal. It is rooted in the religious sense of the human being, made “capable of God” (capax Dei) by the Creator, invited into dialogue with Him, and in the grace of holy baptism. Therefore, everyone is called to prayer, especially the consecrated, affirms the Pope.But all Christians, to avoid being mediocre, “at risk” Christians, not rooted in a strong and personal communion with God, are called in these times to be prayerful, friends of Christ, mature Christians in faith and love. Against the excesses and deviations of a return to the sacred, against the successive proposals of alternative religions, Christian prayer is not only a salutary antidote but food for the soul and a source of life.For a genuine growth of faith and life, the Christian must cultivate personal dialogue with God, which ripens faith in the everydayness of life. In fact, there is an indissoluble link between faith, prayer, and life. The structure of Christian faith guides prayer. Prayer updates and makes personal faith. It has been said that faith without prayer dissolves, and prayer without faith is blind.From these premises, the Pope draws some immediate and urgent pastoral conclusions. Prayer education becomes the qualifying moment of future pastoral in all its forms, with a wide view of its various possibilities.The Holy Father refers to the renewed experience of biblical catechesis on the Psalms, offering an example, already begun with his Wednesday catecheses on the Psalms of the Liturgy of the Hours, Morning and Evening Prayer. He will refer later in his Letter to the ancient and always valid tradition of “Divine Reading” (lectio divina) (cf. n. 39), but already proposes the necessary awakening of Church prayer in Christian communities, following also the example of many lay communities, the necessary education of popular forms of prayer, and, in particular, the normal celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, Morning and Evening Prayer, cardinal moments of Christian community prayer, from ancient times, in all Christian communities.This is the urgency and the gift of prayer for our millennium that is beginning. A new century opens up to the promises and surprises of the Holy Spirit: a century in need of prophecy and message, of new paths and deep religious sense. The Holy Father dreams of a Church deeply rooted in prayer at all levels, in every vocation, capable of following the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, to continue to sail the sea of history, with the sails excited by the wind of the Paraclete. And he dreams of a laboratory of beauty for every faithful and every Christian community, where Christ is the model and the Holy Spirit becomes the secret master of the art of prayer.Three necessary orientations for a living and authentic prayerFor the necessary asceticism of prayer, which can and should lead to contemplation and employment, sometimes mystical, some lines of spirituality, only sketched, can serve within a program that encompasses a whole life.Knowing to recreate daily prayerPerseverance is the New Testament word for prayer. It is the “*proskartereo*” of the community of the Cenacle and the first Christians of Jerusalem, who persevered in prayer (cf. *Acts 1:14; Acts 2:42*). Christian prayer will always require perseverance, the ability to start over every day, to be present with all one’s being, to continue in unanimous prayer, crossing the many deserts that prayer experience must overcome. Creativity or animation presupposes the ability to have a living prayer, a vibrant and lively community with all the possibilities the Church offers.The Virgin Mary present at the Cenacle points to this essential dimension of Christian prayer, the path of perseverance and fidelity.Knowing to endure in prayer so that it becomes contemplationIt is an attitude that requires a clear and visible relationship of faithful engagement with Christ who calls us to prayer, and with the Spirit who prays with us. It is fidelity to the community that accompanies us, to the universal and local Church we represent, to the world for which we pray. Personal contemplation is a gift, but it also requires liturgical contemplation, which presupposes a progressive unification of the pray-er, a theological cementing that gives form and vivifies all his prayer in words, gestures, silences. It is the ability, a gift of the Spirit who animates the contemplation of the Church, to make the prayer formulas one’s own, to feel them recreated in one’s own prayer, to be gently guided by the formulation the Church proposes, and to pour into it the richness of our prayer, ecclesiaslized as the “*voice of the Bride to the Bridegroom*”. Whoever prays like this also learns the law of gratuity, disinterested praise, the value of “lost” time offered to God. Thus, in fact, one appreciates the gift God makes to us by introducing us into the mystery and richness of prayer more than the “service” we render him with our worship. It is at this point that one should arrive through the experience of prayer, if one does not want to succumb to the temptation of abandoning it because of its apparent ineffectiveness in social or pastoral terms.Understanding the prayer formulas as vital realismA prayer with existential depth. The prayer of the Church, as that of the prayerful ones of the Old Testament and as Jesus’ prayer, must be realistic, demanding, and committed to concrete existence, not detached from it. The pray-er and community are asked for that existential vibrational that transforms the dry bones of formulas into a living body that breathes and moves under the impulses of the Spirit. In the bed opened by this eucharistic prayer of the Church, the Christian introduces the reality of history, the existence of the elements, their struggles, the problems of peace and justice. Thus, the prayer commits the pray-er. And so the pray-er commits to living, in continuity with existence, the thousand details of the expressed desires, the pronounced good intentions, to continue in life that alliance with God that He is asking them through the praying dialogue of revelation, to the effective realization of the words and prayer, in a history of salvation that, as in the past, must always be an effective testimony of God’s love among the elements.Thus, the prayer of the Church, with all its richness, is the celebration and updating of the revelation and the continuity of the history of salvation.Prayer and Mystical Life in the Light of MaryA Continuous PrayerThe simple statement of these words opens up a very vast horizon that I certainly do not intend to develop from either a biblical, theological, or spiritual and mystical perspective. I will therefore make only a few brief notes, in order to gather the fundamental message that comes to us from Mary as a safe guide in the field of prayer and mysticism.We can start from a series of fundamental affirmations, almost simple theses, that help us grasp with simplicity the icon of the praying Mary.In Mary’s life, as in Christ’s, the unity between prayer and life is perfect, because in her there is a perfect and constant communion with God. Mary is always presented to us in her incessant inner attention to God and to the mysteries of His Son.But, as in Jesus’ life, moments of explicit prayer and explicit prayers also emerge in Mary’s life, even though silent, operative prayer predominates.It is a reflective and dialogical prayer of Mary at the announcement of the Angel. It is her offering of herself to the Father’s will, with the words: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” the pinnacle of prayer from the Old Testament (cf. Lk 1:26-38).It is a prayer of praise with the Magnificat, with the modulations of biblical prayer from the Fathers of the first alliance (cf. Lk 1:46-55).It is a prayer of generous offering of the Son in Jerusalem, albeit in the silent procession of the offering of Mother, Joseph, and the Son (cf. Lk 2:22ff).It is a prayer of intercession in her simple “They have no wine” at the wedding in Cana of Galilee (cf. Jn 2:3).It is an ineffable communion with the highest prayer of the Son in her being at the foot of the Cross, silent and desolate, living Mother of scattered children, almost to give meaning and maternal collaboration to the priestly prayer of the Son at the Last Supper.It is a model and expression of prayer and church life in her present prayer, in persistent expectation and in solicitous maternal communion, with the disciples in the Cenacle (cf. Acts 1:14).To recall merely her constant prayer, her always docile nature, her “being prayer” in various circumstances, always in communion with Christ, always directed to the Father, always under the action of the Paraclete.For now, I will merely focus on a detail of her prayer, which Luke emphasizes twice: Mary’s contemplative heart prayer (cf. Lk 2:19 and Lk 2:51).The Spiritual Depth of a Contemplative HeartIn the spiritual profile of Mary, and therefore in her spirituality, is decisive the Lucan note that reveals an autobiographical page of Mary: “She kept all these things in her heart,” “Her mother kept all these things in her heart” (Lk 2:19 and Lk 2:51). It is the double Lucan reference.This reference, within the context of the childhood episodes, when the period of the manifestations of the newly born Son begins and then his subsequent encounter in Jerusalem, is significant. Mary remains fixed within the great sapiential tradition that remembers and meditates on the wonders of God to transmit them to future generations. She lives with a deep contemplative attitude towards the words and events. She remembers, updates dynamically, meditates, and discerns. Some attempt to interpret Mary’s attitude with these words, which allude to a sort of game of chance: the term *symbállousa*, exclusive to Luke, means to decipher a riddle, to harmonize the apparently contradictory extremes. *Symbolize* in the Greek sense means *to place together* (as we say of the *symbol of the apostles*), or to shake the dice in the palm of the hand. Mary agitates in her heart words and events, thereby causing a salutary shock and clarification between them. This is the observation of modern exegesis.It has been said that the heart is the place of the Church par excellence, the organ that sums up the person and freedom. Consequently, the heart dimension, sapiential, contemplative, one of the essential traits of Mary in the Gospel of Luke, offers us the key to understanding her personality: a woman of pure and profound heart, who embraces history, capable of making a comparison between promises and events of grace, announcement and fulfillment, a woman who seeks light in apparent contradictions, a heart that remembers, especially in times of trial, when the heart becomes more sensitive to memory and life.This attitude of Mary was implicitly recalled, with reference to (Lk 2:19, 51), by the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution *Dei Verbum*.*In No. 8, which speaks of the living transmission of revealed truth under the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church that believes and prays, the Church looks to Mary to magnify the meditation on the words and the experience of the realities transmitted that the faithful live, imitating Mary, to reach a deeper experience of revelation in time. Here lies the secret of the contemplative depth capable of joining word and history, revelation and daily event. And it is here that Mary becomes a model for a prophetic Church, which, from the depths of the heart, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, interprets the signs of the times, grows in understanding of the truth, proclaims categorical words of meaning for men and women of today, makes decisions and makes evangelical choices, and is fertilized by the power of the Spirit.**We can affirm that this is the fundamental prayer of the Christian, in the light of Mary: a constant memory at the heart of God’s action in one’s own life and history, in the light of the Word and life. But with the depth of a contemplative heart.**In this way, life is illuminated by the Word, one lives from the depths of the heart, and prayer is inserted into the fabric of life, in full Trinitarian communion.**Mary is certainly a safe guide on the path of Christian mysticism. She, in fact, participated fully in the mystery of Christ with a total identification, at the peak of Trinitarian communion and human solidarity, in every instant of Christ’s life, always following Mary step by step, as Mother and as Spouse, as the Church.*In Mary, there is the intoxication of the Trinitarian mysticism, the total communion with the Son, the extreme docility to the grace of the Holy Spirit. She also traverses the abyss of the paradox in the mysticism of the dark night at the foot of the Cross and beyond, to the radiant dawn of the Resurrection. Mary also has a particular mystical experience of the glorious presence of the Son in heaven and of His communication, in faith, to her during the time between the Ascension and her Assumption.Perhaps it is necessary to highlight that Mary lives a mysticism not individual, but clearly communal, in a union with Christ and with the Church.Mary’s mysticism is also the mysticism of the everyday, the divine-human balance of the life of Nazareth, in communion with the Son and with Joseph, during a period of supreme and disconcerting normality with heaven on earth. No ecstasies or visions, no locutions or flights of the spirit, no stigmata or other phenomenal experiences.In Mary: the ecstasy is living outside of herself, attentive to the Son and to the will of the Father; the vision is the altar of faith upon her Son; the locutions are the listening to His word and the astonishment before His silence; the only flight of the Spirit is the whirling of Mary in the normality of the house of Nazareth. There are no other phenomenal experiences, although Mary holds in her heart, pierced by the Word, the secret of an open heart and attentive to the promises and surprises of God.In taking up and nourishing contemporary contemporaries, we must restore the simple mysticism of Mary of Nazareth, in the fullness of her divine and human living, with heaven on earth, but with the earth impregnated with divinity.This is the true Christian mysticism, to which we all aspire, for which we must walk, having Mary as a sure guide.A Marian mysticismHowever, I would like to say a word about a way of living Marian devotion, which is precisely the doctrine of the great master of Marian spirituality of all times, Louis Maria Grignion de Montfort.True devotion, as taught by Montfort, is in reality a Marian mysticism. Living the mystery of Mary means living with her and through her the mystery of salvation, collaborating in it and responding. If one does not adopt this mystical perspective of the *Treatise*, it becomes difficult to grasp its profound meaning. Sometimes, contemporary spirituality lacks a genuine attention to mysticism. Thus, it fails to capture certain depths that come from Christological-Marian mystical theology and the Marian mystical experience, from the history of the past and the present. I refer to authentic, pure-bred Marian mysticism, not apocryphal but true, confirmed by truth and by the evangelical life.In reality, the strength of Montfort’s Marian message lies in this “mystical” view of spirituality and, therefore, of salvation. Its central pages refer to this mysticism that expresses God’s plan, which is the mystery of Christ, and bears the seal of gratuity.It is the mysticism of grace that shapes the Christian. It is the comparison of the image formed with the chisel and the mold. The first is the ascetic way. The second, the way of the mold, is the mystical way, the Marian way. It reveals a grace and an attitude that consist in giving God full space in our lives. To abandon oneself, to give oneself, to let Mary form Christ in us. The mystical dimension of grace, of the superabundant gift, as in the peaks of Christian mysticism, where God acts and the person, actively and passively under the action of the Spirit, is purified, illuminated, united to God, conformed to Christ. The figure of the mold is a stunning image, taken up by Montfort as well in *The Secret of Mary*, given its effectiveness.This mysticism requires a certain passivity, but vivified by an intensity of theological life, in the reception of God’s action that acts maternally through Mary. It is a way of expressing and experiencing her maternal motherhood, her maternal mediation. This involves a presence, a transparency, a communion that molds an effective conformity to Christ, who is the term of identification and conformity. We are “formed” in the image of the Firstborn Son.The path to this collaboration, which entails the rise of availability, is through the synergy in the Holy Spirit. It requires, in the interiority of true devotion, total consecration and growth in an interior exercise of communion. It is that mystical and ascetic way that is grounded in the indissoluble connection through Mary, with Mary, in Mary, and for Mary, in an equivalence that the Spirit of Christ accomplishes in Mary and in us, to then act through Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, and for Jesus. A path that entails the necessary pneumatological dimension, the Spirit’s action in us, reception, and response in the Holy Spirit.A reciprocity similar to the “in Christ” dimension, as expressed by a monk from Mount Athos, who almost captured in a formula his life in Christ: “Her life is my life.” He referred to Christ. This reciprocity also encompasses the truth of the expression: “My life is her life.” Montfort had the grace to propose it clearly.However, today, the richness of the spirituality that contemplates Mary’s spiritual profile, a profile of holiness as communion with Christ, realistic and committed, offers to Montfort’s mysticism a necessary complement, if ever needed. And it is in these terms that contemporary spirituality can and should embrace Montfort’s message.Everything through Mary. A depth of spiritual communion with the Mother’s spirit. To be like Mary, or to be Mary… This is the mystical dimension of Christ’s being in us, of Mary in us.Everything as Mary. It is the line of updated imitation, with the theological and spiritual connotation that we have highlighted. Mary’s relationship with Christ, and even more so with the Trinity, is unique, but it is exemplary. Therefore, she is also for the Christian the true human archetype of total response and collaboration with God’s plan. It is a matter of imitating, but deeply, to the point of reviving Christ Jesus’ feelings and Mary of Nazareth’s feelings… One cannot live in Christ if one does not live as Christ. One cannot live in Mary if one does not live as Mary. It is the reciprocal demand of communion and imitation, from the deepest level, but with the evangelical norm of the lived Marian way, with the note of the path of growing fidelity.Everything in Mary.The Mystery of Mary’s PresenceIt is the mystery of the presence, or metaphor, of Mary’s co-presence in our Trinitarian communion or inhabitation. Mary’s dwelling is the Trinity. In this communion, Mary has her inhabitation in the Christian, always in the communion of the same Spirit. The Christian, through Christ in the Spirit, also has his root in this paradise, this sanctuary, this Marian life. But without disjunctions, rather in a rediscovered harmony of communion with Mary in the same Christ and the same Spirit. It is then that the phrase of the monk from Mount Athos can also be applied to Mary, as implicitly taught in the doctrine of Montfort. It can also be said: “My life is her life.” It is an authentic communion of life. The Christian can offer himself as a supplement of humanity so that Mary may live in us, and Christ may live in us.ConclusionIn the third millennium, the Church invites us to live the grace and commitment of prayer: a gift and an art, a commitment and a grace, a communion with God and with our brothers, a daily encounter with the Lord of life and history. It also proposes, for the Christian and the Christian woman of today, a life that bears the taste and wisdom, the inner anointing and outer strength of Christian mysticism. This is the way of truth and life, a lived Christianity with the seal of experience.In the face of deviating proposals for prayer and spirituality, excessive mysticalizing, and empty fanatisms or devotions, Mary is a sure guide for prayer and mysticism. In her immense communion with the Trinity and her astonishing simplicity of mystical life, lived in mystery, she offers a balanced approach, a “mysticism of the everyday,” a “Nazarene mysticism,” the Mother of the Lord in the human-divine everyday, which is all heaven on earth and the divine in the human.The Apostolic Exhortation *Marialis Cultus* by Paul VI delves deeply into Mary’s role as a model and teacher of Christian prayer and contemplation.Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian theologyMarian apparitions and the Graduate Program in Mariology at the Locus Mariologicus Institute.Continue your Marian formation: Explore our resources on Mariology, Marian theology and Marian apparitions. Enroll in the Graduate Program in Mariology at the Locus Mariologicus Institute.