Prayer

by Hans Urs von Balthasar

The hearer par excellence is the virgin, who becomes pregnant with the Word and bears it as her Son and the Father’s. As for herself, even as Mother she remains a handmaid; the Father alone is Lord, together with the Son who is her life and who fashions it. She is the product of him who is the fruit of her womb. She still carries him within herself, even after she has given birth to him; to find him, all she has to do is to look into her heart, which is full of him. Still, she does not neglect to contemplate the growing child beside her, the youth, the man. His thoughts and actions continually surprise her, so that, increasingly, she “does not understand” his meaning, as for instance when, in the Temple, he leaves her without warning; when he fails to receive her when she visits him; when he refuses to manifest Iris power in his public ministry, squandering his life and ultimately slipping away from her on the cross, substituting the stranger, John, for himself. With all the strength she can muster she listens to this Word as it grows more and more vast, divine and seemingly alien; its dimensions almost tear her asunder, yet it is for this, for everything, that she gave her consent right at the start. She lets herself be led where she “does not wish to go”—so far is the Word she follows from being her own wisdom. But she consents to this leading; it is a measure of the fact that the Word which she loves has been “implanted” in her heart (Jas 1:21).