The Virgin Mary knew in her heart the mystery of Christ, that is, what her son would suffer

Dear Father Angelo,

I started visiting your website a few days ago, and it has helped me a lot in preparing biblical themes.

My name is Sergio P., I am part of a catechumenal community, and while presenting some topics on “MARY,” a doubt arose.

Did the Virgin Mary know in her heart the mystery of Christ, that is, what her son would suffer, or did she meditate in her heart and observe the extraordinary things that were happening around him? I would be grateful if you would answer me privately.

Thank you, and may the peace of the risen Christ be with you.

The priest’s response

Dear friend,

1. Our Lady did not know what Jesus was going through in his heart in the same way that Jesus could read directly into hers.

Jesus, as a man, had the beatific vision. This means that with his human mind he could see directly into the mind of God everything that was in the mind and heart of every man.

According to the common opinion of theologians, Our Lady did not have the beatific vision in this world.

Moreover, the Second Vatican Council in Lumen gentium reminds us that Our Lady journeyed in faith.

Now, faith has as its object realities that are not manifest.

For this reason, Christ, precisely because he enjoyed the beatific vision, did not have faith.

Our Lady, on the other hand, did have faith, and the Church presents her to us as a model of faith.

2. However, Sacred Scripture reminds us that Our Lady was defined to the Angel as “Full of grace.”

And if grace works through the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we must conclude that Our Lady enjoyed, like no other saint, in such an excellent way, the four gifts of the Holy Spirit that enlighten the intellect directly or indirectly: understanding, wisdom, knowledge, and counsel.

3. Above all, through her intellect, Our Lady had an understanding of the Scriptures: she knew better than any other rabbi of her time who the Messiah would be and what his work would be.

Precisely because she knew his identity: “He shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is 9:5), she felt unworthy to rush towards the motherhood of the Messiah as other girls in Israel did, and she conceived the desire to stand aside, to remain a virgin, and she shared this desire with her spouse, St. Joseph.

4. She knows the work of the Messiah, as prophetically described by Isaiah in chapter 53: “Despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Yet he bore our sufferings, he took on our pains, and we considered him punished, struck by God and humiliated. He was pierced for our crimes, crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brings us salvation fell upon him; by his wounds we are healed.

We were all like sheep that had gone astray, each of us following our own path; and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Is 53:3-7).

5. Our Lady knew that Jesus was perfectly aware of his vocation and how he would bring about redemption.

She knew, even before the author of The Imitation of Christ reminded us, that Jesus’ whole life was a cross and martyrdom, because Christ, from the first moment of his conception, together with the beatific vision, also had perfect knowledge of his passion and death and the pain of the sins of all men, individually understood.

6. Mary was therefore aware of the mystery that was taking place in her Son’s Heart. She did not see everything clearly, as in a vision, but her intuition was perfect and constant.

A beautiful hymn from the liturgy of the Church (“I would so much like to know from You…”) expresses these feelings of Our Lady with the following words:

“I would so much like to know from You… if when He was a child… Did you explain to him what would happen to him? And how many times did you also cry in secret, O Mother, when you felt that soon they would kill him for us?

I thank you for this silence that remains between us, I bless your courage to live alone with him. Now I understand that even in those days you were thinking of us, for every child of man who dies, I pray to You in this way.

Whoever wrote these words understood what was in Mary’s heart.

Even through this pain she carried in her heart, she participated in a unique way in the mystery of Christ’s Redemption.

Participating in a unique way does not only mean in a very high way, but higher than all the saints put together, in the same way that her holiness was higher than that of all the angels and saints put together.

As you can see, we are touching on very lofty truths that fill us with love and devotion towards the Mother of God.

I wish this for you with all my heart, and also for all our visitors.

I assure you of my prayers and bless you.

Father Angelo

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