Some time ago we focused on the terrible and fascinating mystery of the cry of Jesus crucified: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46).

Like Jesus, Mary too had her culminating moment, her desolation, her forsakenness; she is the Desolate. When from the height of the cross, Jesus, indicating John, who represented all of us, said: “Woman, behold your son!” (Jn 19:26), those words sounded in her like a substitution. Mary underwent the trial of losing Jesus, not just because he was dying, but also because someone else was taking his place. And she accepted it. And with her new fiat [be done, ed.] at the foot of Calvary, she let go of Jesus and thus became the mother of all, taking on the motherhood of countless human beings.

Mary desolate is the Mother par excellence. In her desolation, in the peak of inexpressible sorry and love, we have always seen God’s plan for her completely fulfilled. There at the foot of the cross, Mary becomes mother not only to Jesus, but of his Body, which is the Church. She is the universal mother who holds together, with her love, all human beings, her children; she makes them brothers and sisters in the same way mothers on earth do. She is the mother of unity, the bond of unity for all her children.

And for this reason we have always linked all she represents to this aspect of love which is communication, indispensable of attaining unity, and have taken the Desolate as patroness of our means of communication.

Recently, thinking of Mary, we noted how communicators inspired by the charism of unity know the qualities of a mother.

And if Jesus forsaken seemed to us to be the pupil of God’s eye open onto the world, we can say that Mary desolate seems to us a kind of lightproof room taking in all that is negative in the world. But just as from a film negative, we develop a positive image, she transforms situations in such a way that from what is negative, we can see the positive.

Mary is the type and figure of the church and so it is evident that in such a sublime creature all Christians can find a model for themselves; but I think professionals in communication can in a particular way, find in Mary desolate the model for their own perfection.

From the beginning Mary appeared to us in two guises: as a monument of virtue and as an icon of the gospel’s most profound law: knowing how to lose. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Lk 9:24).

Chiara Lubich

p. 299, Essential Writings