Le sette parole di Maria

Mary speaks in an explicit way in only sixteen verses of the Gospels. These contain 154 Greek words in all, of which a full 102 are taken up by the Magnificat.If we keep to the textual dictation, the sentences pronounced by Mary are six: two at the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel; a more vast one at her visit to Elizabeth; one in the temple of Jerusalem before her twelve-year-old son in the company of the scribes; two, in the end, at Cana during the wedding feast.One can add another episode to this list: on Golgotha, the dying Jesus directly consults his Mother. “Woman, behold your son!” Mary, in this case, remains silent, but her silence is eloquent, a mute but efficacious “yes”, her seventh and final word, tacit but decisive because she introduces it in a new form of receptivity and maternity.