Lourdes 2025 (2/5) discover Marie through her prayer

Blessed among all, what woman is Marie? A figure which today may especially question the fairer sex, to whom the church offers it particularly in model. Virgin and married, without sin, mother of God … such an extraordinary vocation that she enthusiasts one and tetanizes others.

So much so that on Mary’s back pile up the images of Épinal. “It would be wrong to believe Marie erased and silent. All gospels gathered, it is she who speaks the most after Jesus, ”says the theologian Sylvaine Landrivon. “She is an extremely strong woman, who lives an inner revolution, remains standing at the cross,” adds Frédérique Poulet, theologian.

Marie belongs to the least considered social categories of her time: woman in a patriarchal system, Jewish under Roman domination. Here it is, however, who says “yes” to God without asking for the authorization of a man.

Then she starts, alone, towards her cousin Élisabeth, who greets her by this formula: “You are blessed between all women” (Lk 1, 42). For Sylvaine Landrivon, it is above all the absolute fidelity of the Virgin, her radical commitment, that must be remembered: “Before being a woman’s model, Marie is above all, for all, a model of disciple.”

“We are not talking about Marie’s exploits”

Marie-Flavie de Reboul 24 years old, single, teacher

It is because I was born on August 15 – a few days too early – that my parents added Marie to my first name. So I always had the feeling of sharing something with the Virgin, without praying for it too much.

As a teenager, her perfection made her foreign, even cuters. After a pilgrimage to Lourdes, I felt called to pray more, and, taking the side that my vision of her was biased, I read a novel about her life. Gradually, our relationship has changed. I now see her as a swinging woman, who the hardest part was asked, without her hiding on.

We talk little about his exploits. She had to give birth in a crèche, to flee in Egypt, to see her son die without looking away. We often represent her eyes down, with a vague smile, silent behind Jesus. Study the character allowed me to get out of this apparent “nonsense”.

Marie is “blessed”, chosen. I like to meditate on this sentence of I greet you Marie. I admire the humility with which she accepted her mission, as I admire this woman who “kept all these events in her heart” (Lk 2, 51).

Where other saints seem inaccessible to me, due to the extraordinary exploits that are attributed to them, Marie reassures me by the banality of her life. Despite her mission, she was simply a mother, who has sanctified everything in her very simple daily life, even change the swaddling jesus.