The Virgin of Listening during Advent

# Mary, the Virgin of Listening: A Model for Advent## The Virgin of ListeningAdvent, in its role as a time of **preparation**, already presents a highly significant Marian doctrine. The presence of Mary in the Church’s liturgy during Advent has its roots in theological realities, centered on her vocation and mission. The Mother is perfectly integrated into the celebration of the Son’s mystery, imparting a spiritual and contemplative emphasis. Thus, Advent—and indeed the entire Christmas cycle—is the time when, more than any other liturgical period, the cooperation of the Virgin in the work of salvation is strongly emphasized. This is not due to devotional overlay or excessive language, but as part of the divine economy’s development.Scripture helps us understand the extent of the **fiat**. During Advent, the Virgin stands out as an emblematic figure of God’s people in listening, prayer, and offering.Listening to God’s word takes precedence over all else, and it is also the principle and foundation of spiritual life and sanctity. Mary listens, receives, and meditates upon it within herself to bear fruit. This word that requires faith, availability, humility, and readiness is received as things divine should be. It bears Jesus’ words: **“Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it”** (Lk 11:27).Thus, the Word does not descend from heaven as a fully-formed man with a body sculpted directly by God like Adam (cf. Gen 2:7), but comes into this world **“born of a woman”** (Gal 4:4) to save humanity through its history. The Gospels’ genealogies of Jesus, read during this time, where the final link is Mary, remind us of humanity’s assumption and God’s immersion in man.The motherhood of Mary is not primarily the result of a biological process. Above all, it is the fruit of adherence to God’s Word. In fact, according to divine design, it is through consenting to the angel’s proposal that she embraces Christ and gives Him to the world. Without making verse 38 (“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word”) the high point of the Annunciation (as described in the Dictionary Mariological: Announcement on locusmariologicus.org), Luke sought to highlight the exceptional quality of Mary’s act of faith. This consent is called faith or obedience of faith: she, “full of faith, conceived by faith the flesh of Christ,” says Saint Augustine (Sermo 215. Contra Fausto 24,4).The history passes through this historic moment of grace and freedom. Mary is the woman who makes her choice, with humble and full decision, before God’s decisive Word, taking not only her own destiny but also that of the world into her hands.Mary’s consent reveals itself as broader when compared to Abraham’s act of faith. “Nothing is impossible for God,” the angel Gabriel had told him (Luke 1:37), using the same words that God had spoken to Abraham, in response to Sarah’s incredulity (Gen 18:13), regarding the conception of Isaac (Gen 18:24). These words would later become, in prophetic revelations, a technical term, almost a refrain.Abraham believed that God was able to revive Sara’s barren and now dead womb: “He believed in God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not into being” (Romans 4:17). It is no surprise then that just as by faith God made Abraham the father of a people as numerous as the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:16), making him a blessing for all peoples (Genesis 12:2-3), so Mary, by the incomparable quality of her faith, becomes supremely fruitful for the Church, as the Tradition has unanimously recognized.She is the faithful and obedient one, becoming the mother of the new Israel, the Church, or the universal mother of the faithful.If Sarah’s fertility, like that of Hannah and Elizabeth (which Luke evokes), can be seen as a kind of creation, that is, a passage from nothingness to existence, Mary’s fertility, known by no man (cf. Luke 1:34), is even greater. We are facing a singular and unique miracle. It was accomplished through a “fiat” which, in the same Evangelist, recalls Christ’s in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42).

There is an antithetical parallelism between the annunciation to Zachary, rebuked for not believing the angel’s word (Lk 1:20), and that of Mary, who expresses a meditated but engaging ‘yes’. Elizabeth, subject to divine action, looking at the Virgin proclaims the first beatitude of the New Testament: “Blessed is she who believed that the words of the Lord would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:45). Mary places an act of faith on par with the event announced to her and which recreates the world now in response to the fruit of listening to the Word.

She believed. Faith is primarily conversion, that is, entering into God’s perspective and His works. Without conversion, which is always, as for Abraham and the tribes of Israel, an abandonment of the land (projects, evidence of reason, and the tranquil satisfaction of physical possession) to be led solely by the voice and word of God, the fulfillment of divine will in history is not possible. No wonder that the substance of John the Baptist’s preaching and the core of the Gospel appeal are metanoia.

What is metanoia? Fulfilling God’s will in history

A biblical term for complete heart change by which one turns away from sin to serve the living God. The prophets of the Old Testament exhorted to a conversion that would turn the people away from idolatry and superficial religious practice to live faithfully God’s law and their social responsibilities (Is 1:10-20, Ez 18:1-32).

John the Baptist and then Jesus preached a radical change of heart demanded by the coming of God’s Kingdom (Mt 3:1-12, Mk 1:15). John’s baptism was one of repentance (Mk 1:4, Acts 13:24, 19:4). In Jesus’ name, the Apostles invited people to convert and be baptized, thus beginning a new life in the Spirit (Acts 2:38).

The gift of genuine metanoia (cf. Ps 50:14) is so special that one who exposes it to repeated sins can lose it forever (cf. Heb 6:4-6).

Faith is darkness, mystery, and at the same time, theological hope: it may involve hesitation and doubt, temptation and struggle. But it is expected to already glimpse the certainty of the outcome.

To deepen your spiritual reflection on Mary as a Virgin of Listening during Advent, consult the Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus by Paul VI, on the titles and cult of Mary in the liturgy.

Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian Apparitions and the Master’s in Mariology.