“Mary Most Holy is the Seat of Wisdom because she welcomed Jesus into her womb and he is the Incarnate Wisdom. With her fiat at the Annunciation, Mary consented to the divine will and Wisdom made its dwelling in her womb, making her Wisdom’s most exemplary disciples. The Virgin was blessed, not so much for having suckled the Son of God, but for having nourished herself on the wholesome milk of God’s Word.” (Pope Saint John Paul II, Angelus, September 4, 1983) In order properly to understand this sacred hymn of praise, we need to bear in mind that the Blessed Virgin Mary is speaking on the basis of her own experience, in which she was enlightened and instructed by the Holy Spirit. No one can correctly understand God or his word, unless he has received such understanding immediately from the Holy Spirit. But no one can receive it from the Holy Spirit without experiencing, proving and feeling it. In such experience the Holy Spirit instructs us as in his own school, outside of which nothing is learned except empty words and prattle. When the Holy Virgin experienced what great things God was working in her despite her insignificance, lowliness, poverty, inferiority, the Holy Spirit taught her this deep insight and wisdom, that God is kind of Lord who does nothing but exalt those of low degree and put down the mighty from their thrones…” (Martin Luther, Commentary on the Magnificat of Mary, Introduction). “The Madonna is Seat of Wisdom not because she had spoken, not because she was a Doctor of the Church, not because she was seated on the cathedra, not because she founded a university: she’s Seat of Wisdom because she gave Christ to the world, who is the Incarnate Wisdom. She accomplished a fact. The same for us: we’ll have wisdom if we live in such a way that Jesus will be in us, among us, in fact.” (Chiara Lubich, Una via nuova, Citta Nuova, 2002) “Mary doesn’t live of herself only, but from far more profound depths: the Holy Spirit in her. From him emanates not only her Son, the content and fruit of her being; from him emanates the fulfillment and the form of his very life.” (Klaus Hemmerle, Brücken zum credo)