Commentary on the Gospel – December 8, 2025

Sometimes I feel a bit uneasy when I think about the contrast between the images of the Virgin Mary we are used to—crowns, mantles, jewels—and what the real life of that simple village woman, Mary of Nazareth, must have been like. And when I say “village,” I mean a real village: an archaeologist once told me that in those days Nazareth was little more than a handful of inhabited caves.

But over time we have turned Mary into something she almost certainly was not: shrines, apparitions, messages, novenas, declarations… I prefer to think of her as that simple woman, but full of faith. A woman who had a son whom she probably never fully understood, and who at one point she may even have thought was out of His mind. And yet, deep in her heart, she looked at Him with her hope placed in God. A woman faithful and humble in her belief. She did not understand her Son, but she did not leave Him. She walked beside Him—even to the moment of the greatest “not understanding,” when she followed Him all the way to the cross. When every promise seemed shattered, she remained there. Out of a mother’s love, and because in her heart she believed there was something more than the pain and death that were visible to the eye.

Today I think of the Immaculate Virgin not as someone lifted high on a pedestal, but as the simple, faith-filled woman who—without understanding much, without knowing theology—walked with Jesus and His disciples, stood by His side, and let the words of her Son fall gently into her heart. And she kept on walking.

Today I want to celebrate all those people who, like Mary, believe with simplicity even without understanding everything or studying theology; people who take others by the hand, who accompany their brothers and sisters in suffering and in death, who cry with those who cry and rejoice with those who rejoice; people who build family, fraternity, and justice, who never leave anyone out—no matter how strange, lost, or “out of their mind” they may seem. In other words, people who build the Kingdom of God here in our world, creating spaces of love and brotherhood where no one is excluded.