St John Paul speaks of knowledge, but I suspect this woman’s wisdom is also rooted in her lived experience:
Mary, then, is the one who has the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy. She knows its price, she knows how great it is. In this sense, we call her the Mother of mercy: our Lady of mercy, or Mother of divine mercy; in each one of these titles there is a deep theological meaning, for they express the special preparation of her soul, of her whole personality, so that she was able to perceive, through the complex events, first of Israel, then of every individual and of the whole of humanity, that mercy of which “from generation to generation”(Lk. 1:50) people become sharers according to the eternal design of the most Holy Trinity.
Holding things in her heart (Cf. Lk 2:19, 2:51), Mary was able to do more than let life’s events wash past her in the current. How do we perceive God’s activity in our lives? It’s about more than attempting a capture of these moments.
Dives in Misericordia, the second encyclical of Pope John Paul II, is available online here, and is copyright © 1980 – Libreria Editrice Vaticana
