The Mother of God is perhaps the most well-known woman in Christianity. Her face is everywhere: on church walls, in paintings, statues, medals, and shrines. For centuries, we have addressed her as Mother, our Intercessor, and Queen.
And sometimes a thought crosses my mind: Have we elevated Mary so much that she has become an abstraction to us—that we have stopped encountering her as a woman?
Because the woman who appears in the pages of the Gospel is not exactly silent, gentle, faceless, or uninvolved, as we may often imagine her to be.
We can see from the text that when the angel announces what is going to happen to her, she asks:
“How will this be?” (Luke 1:34)
She asks a question.
The renowned Czech theologian Tomáš Halík, in his book Patience with God, warns of the danger of a faith that has forgotten how to ask questions. “Answers without questions—without those that originally provoked these answers, but also without those that arise anew through the answers—are like trees without roots,” Halík writes. He then adds: “Only in the encounter between questions and answers do our statements acquire their true meaning and living dynamism: truth happens in dialogue.”
Perhaps this is precisely one of the important challenges facing the Church today: before offering an answer, it is necessary to hear the question. It is essential to create space for people’s needs.
To hear the person who searches, doubts, suffers, questions, and perhaps no longer knows how to express their longing for God. A faith that fears questions easily turns into a collection of ready-made answers; living faith, by contrast, remains on the path of searching. Faith is always more about seeking and questioning than about having answers.
And then comes the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55)—something extraordinarily powerful, free from superficial piety. This is not merely the voice of Mary as a mother. She raises her voice against injustice, poverty, hunger, and humiliation, knowing that God is not indifferent to any of these.
Mary does not speak soft or easy words. She proclaims a powerful text that we ourselves might not dare to utter so readily today.
It is not easy for us to challenge or call out the powerful on their thrones, the wealthy, and those in positions of authority. That is why the Magnificat remains so relevant today, but also dangerous. Mary knows that God stands with the poor, the oppressed, and the humiliated. She does not speak from the comfort of religious devotion, but from the restlessness that arises when conscience can no longer accept silence. She speaks about what everyone sees, yet few have the courage to say aloud.
This is the cry of a woman.
This is the voice of a woman who has something to say to the world.
And women know how to speak. Her voice is prophetic and free.
I see Mary as a strong, active, proactive woman. Christianity is always expressed through action. We must bear witness through our lives to what we proclaim with our words.
When we look at Mary, we focus more on her motherhood or her purity than on her voice. We are more familiar with her gentle face than with her voice.
Yet when we open the Gospel—there she is, speaking.
Voice matters deeply, as does the spoken word. Words can open a space in which a person feels accepted, safe, and free. But words can also do the opposite: they can close that space, wound, humiliate, or make someone afraid to speak again.
God creates the world through the divine Word. Words shape reality. They carry something creative within them.
To deprive someone of their voice is to make them invisible.
Mary was a young woman from a small village. She had to live with circumstances she could not fully understand. She gave birth to a child under difficult conditions. Later, she watched her son suffer, unable to fully comprehend or control what was happening.
She remained beneath the cross when everyone else fled.
Perhaps we sometimes think more about her obedience than about her courage and determination.
But:
She stands.
She remembers.
She endures.
She feels.
Mary does not know everything, yet she dares to say “yes.” But that “yes” requires questioning. She does not want to consent without understanding.
Mary listens, but:
She questions.
She speaks.
She dares.
She notices.
She rises.
What does it mean to be free when you do not know how something you have begun will end?
And more importantly: Why are we so afraid of women who, like Mary, have voices of their own?
Perhaps it is time to see Mary as one of us—not to diminish her, but to rediscover her among real people, among women and their struggles, fears, longings, uncertainties, and victories.
We have elevated Mary so much that we have taken away her voice. She has become silent—we see her only as a sacred figure.
Yet Mary is a participant in conversation, a subject in every dialogue.
Perhaps the real question is not what our relationship with Mary is, but what our relationship is, in everyday life, with a woman who has a voice, who has something to say, who carries a message.
With the woman we work with, with whom we share our lives…
Because if we take seriously the woman who speaks in the Gospel, we can no longer so easily describe women as those who should simply be good, obedient, and silent.
Mary is not merely a woman to whom we pray.
Mary is a woman who speaks.
Then we come to Cana in Galilee (John 2:3). There, Mary notices a problem that others may have overlooked:
“They have no wine.”
This simple sentence tells us a great deal about Mary. She is present, engaged in what is happening, and attentive to the circumstances around her. She does not turn away from a problem. She does not pretend it does not exist. She recognizes someone’s need and responds to it.
Sometimes we say, “If you have a problem, pray.” And indeed, we should pray. But Mary reminds us that faith is not passivity. Prayer is not an excuse for failing to do what is within our power.
Faith does not call us to close our eyes to reality and simply wait for God to resolve everything.
We must free ourselves from this superficial piety that carries no sense of responsibility.
Mary shows us that being devout does not mean being silent, voiceless, invisible, or indifferent to what happens around us.
She claims her space with one simple sentence:
“They have no wine.” (John 2:3)
She does not deliver a sermon. She does not explain why it happened. She does not condemn anyone. She simply recognizes a need and brings it before Jesus.
Then comes her second important statement:
“Do whatever he tells you.” (John 2:5)
Here we see something even deeper. Mary acts, but she does not take God’s place. She recognizes the problem, brings it to Jesus, and then directs others toward him.
She does not say, “Do what I tell you.”
She does not place herself above the word of Jesus.
Instead, she says:
“Do whatever he tells you.”
This is true cooperation with God.
Mary teaches us that we can be active yet humble; proactive yet obedient; engaged without attempting to control God.
Perhaps most people prefer a silent Mary because that is easier. Remaining silent requires no intellectual effort. I do not expose myself to the risk of being judged or seen as different. But this has nothing to do with being an active Christian.
Our task is to see what is happening, recognize a person in need, speak up, do what we can, and then listen to God’s word.
Cooperating with God does not mean that we lead God. It means recognizing where God is at work and being ready to do what God asks of us.
Mary at Cana therefore stands between two statements:
“They have no wine.”
— I see reality.
“Do whatever he tells you.”
— I trust God and am ready to cooperate with God’s plan.
Between these two statements lies mature faith: seeing a need, speaking about it, praying, and acting—while always remaining guided by God’s word.
Mary shows us something else that is profoundly important: being devout does not mean ceasing to think.
A person can become complicit in evil precisely when they stop thinking and judging independently.
Hannah Arendt, reflecting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, examined how people can participate in terrible acts when they hide behind the statement: “I was only following orders.”
Arendt connected this problem to what she called thoughtlessness—the absence of thinking, or the inability or unwillingness to exercise independent judgment.
Therefore, woman, do not believe that having faith means remaining silent.
Ask questions.
Speak.
Bear witness.
Recognize the need.
Say what you see.
Warn others!
Fight!
Do not give up!
Speak.
Speak.
Speak.
And then, like Mary, when God speaks, have the courage to say:
“Let it be to me according to your word.”
References
- The Bible: Old and New Testaments. Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1980.
- Halík, Tomáš. Strpljenje s Bogom: Pripovijest o Zakeju danas [Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Today]. Translated from German by Jozo Džambo. Sarajevo: FMC Svjetlo riječi, 2015, p. 24.
- Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann u Jeruzalemu: Izvještaj o banalnosti zla [Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil]. Zagreb: Naklada Jesenski i Turk, 2020, pp. 129–131.
