Scripture Readings:
Ecclus 24:14-16
Luke 11:27-28
“And my abode is in the full assembly of saints.” (Ecclus 24:16)
“Blessed is the womb that bore thee… Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.” (Luke 11:27-28)
As the Church marks another Saturday dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, today’s readings give us a profound glimpse into her place in the economy of salvation—not only as Mother of God but as the model hearer and keeper of God’s Word.
The first reading, drawn from Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), is part of the traditional texts the Church has long applied to Our Lady. Here, Wisdom speaks:
“From the beginning, and before the world, was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be.”
(Ecclus 24:14)
This poetic passage, while referring immediately to Divine Wisdom, has been consistently understood in Marian light by the Fathers and the liturgical tradition. Just as the Word of God was with God from the beginning, so too, in the divine counsels, Mary was preordained to be the Mother of the Word Incarnate.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, that great Marian Doctor, writes:
“In the foreknowledge of God, Mary was already present from the beginning, when Wisdom played before Him. She is the house of God, built by Wisdom Himself, in which He chose to dwell.”
(Sermo de Aquaeductu)
Mary’s role, then, is not incidental. She is the dwelling of God, chosen before time to be the new Ark, the living Temple, the tabernacle of the Most High.
This understanding reaches its fulfillment in the Gospel (Luke 11:27-28), when a woman in the crowd exclaims:
“Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the breasts which thou didst suck!”
To which Our Lord replies—not to deny, but to elevate and clarify:
“Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.”
At first glance, it might seem that Christ redirects the woman’s praise away from His Mother. But the Fathers insist: far from diminishing Mary, Our Lord magnifies her. For it was not only by bearing Him physically that she was blessed—it was because she heard the word of God and kept it.
As St. Augustine famously taught:
“She conceived Him in her mind before she conceived Him in her womb. The maternal kinship would have done her no good unless she had first borne Christ more happily in her heart than in her flesh.”
(De Sancta Virginitate, ch. 3)
Thus, today’s Gospel is not a correction of Marian devotion but a profound deepening of it. Mary is the model Christian because she first believed (cf. Luke 1:45). She received the Word, pondered it in her heart, and gave her fiat. In doing so, she becomes the exemplar for all who wish to dwell in the assembly of the saints.
St. Bede the Venerable comments:
“Christ does not deny His Mother’s blessedness, but shows that she is more blessed in doing the will of His Father than in the privilege of childbearing. This reply is made not to disown His Mother, but to show what should be the true reason for praise.”
(In Lucae Evangelium)
A Marian Reflection for This Saturday
On this fourth-class Saturday of Our Lady, as the Church quietly honors her in the rhythm of her weekly cycle, we do well to meditate on Mary not only as Queen and Mother but as the first disciple—the one who “kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19). She is Wisdom’s dwelling, the fairest of the created order, whose interior obedience made possible the Incarnation of the Word.
Let us, then, in imitation of her, seek not merely to praise her with our lips, but to imitate her in our lives: by listening to the Word of God, keeping it, and letting it bear fruit within us.