There exist in the gospels other aspects that are very interesting which serve to help us see in a deductive manner who the Mother was and how she acted. In the first place Jesus is the One Who was sent to manifest the good news by which He lived completely, prior to proclaiming them.
In the second place Jesus was that Son Who, as a child, observed and admired in His mother that whole set of human values –– humility, patience, fortitude –– which were later on to be promulgated in the mountains. I say this because every time that Mary appears in the gospels she manifests those characteristics which are put forth in Jesus’ sermon on the mountain: patience, humility, fortitude, peace, meekness and compassion.
All of us are, in some manner, a reflection of our mothers. A true mother is always recreating and forming her child, in some manner, according to her way of looking at things in so far as ideals, convictions and sincerity are concerned. For Jesus, it must have made a great impression on Him from His earliest years, observing and admiring, and without even wanting to, imitating that silence, that dignity and peace, and that way of not being bothered by adverse circumstances …of His Mother.
For me it is evident that Jesus did nothing more on the Mountain than present a blueprint of the spiritual figure of His mother which rose up in Him from the depths of His subconscious mind, and that were nurtured by the remembrances of His recollections of His early years. For me, the beatitudes are a picture of Mary.
As we advance through the shadows of the pages of the gospels we catch a glimpse of a striking parallelism between the spirituality of Jesus and that of His Mother.
In the decisive moment of her life, Mary put a seal on her destiny with the word YES! (Luke 1:37). Jesus, when His hour arrived, sealed His destiny and the salvation of the world with the same word, YES! (Mark 14: 36) This word symbolizes and synthesizes a vast spirituality which completely envelops and contains one’s entire life with all its impulses and compromises in total harmony with the lives of The Poor Ones of God.
When Mary wants to express her spiritual identity, her “personality” before God and men, she does it with those words: I am the handmaid of the Lord. (Luke 1:38) When Jesus proposes Himself like a photographic image to be copied and imitated, He does it with the words “meek and humble of heart.” (Matthew 11:29) According to the exegetes, the two expressions have the same contents, once again in harmony with the spirituality of The Poor Ones of God.
Mary speaks of the Lord who puts down the mighty from their thrones and Who exalts the humble. (Luke 1:52) Jesus says that the proud will be put down and the humble will be raised up.
From these and other parallel expressions that can be found in the gospels, we could conclude that Mary had an extraordinary and determining influence on the life and spirituality of Jesus; that much of the evangelical inspiration is due to Mary as a distant source; that she was an excellent teacher, and that her pedagogy consisted not so much in words but in living, to a high degree, a certain spirituality with which her Son was impregnated from childhood. In a word, the gospel song can be sung clearly in harmony with the haunting echoes of the Mother.
Extracted from the book ´The silence of Mary´, by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga
