by Monsignor Tonino Bello
The first chapter of the Acts says that the Apostles, after the Ascension, while waiting for the Holy Spirit, went upstairs, where they lived... And with them there was also Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is the last biblical sequence in which the Madonna appears. From the top of this station. From the upper floor. Almost as if to indicate to us the spiritual levels on which the existence of every Christian must take place.
Holy Mary, woman of the upper floor, splendid icon of the Church, you, your personal Pentecost, had already experienced it at the angel's announcement, when the Holy Spirit descended upon you, and spread his shadow over you power of the Most High. If, therefore, you stopped in the cenacle, it was only to implore on those around you the same gift that one day, in Nazareth, had enriched your soul. As the Church must do, precisely. Which, already possessed by the Spirit, has the task of imploring, until the end of the centuries, the irruption of God on all the fibers of the world.
Give her, therefore, the exhilaration of the heights, the measure of long times, the logic of overall judgements. Lend her your foresight. Don't allow it to suffocate in the courtyards of news. Have her look at the story from Kingdom perspectives. Because, only if he knows how to put his eye into the highest slits of the tower, from where the views widen, will he be able to become an accomplice of the Spirit and thus renew the face of the earth.
Saint Mary, woman of the upper floor, helps the pastors of the Church to become tenants of those higher regions of the spirit from which the forgiveness of human weaknesses is easier, the judgment on the whims of the heart is more indulgent, the credit on the hopes of resurrection. She ensures that there are no inflexible guardians of the columns, which are always sad when the red ink of the love with which they were written cannot be seen.
Holy Mary, woman of the upper floor, let us contemplate from your very windowsills the joyful, painful and glorious mysteries of life: joy, victory, health, illness, pain, death. It seems strange: but only from that height will success not make you dizzy, and only at that level will defeats prevent you from letting yourself fall into the void.
Look out from your own window up there, the fresh wind of the Spirit will more easily catch us with the triumph of its seven gifts. The days will be imbued with wisdom, and we will understand where the paths of life lead, and we will take advice on the most practicable paths, and we will decide to face them with fortitude, and we will be aware of the pitfalls that the road hides, and we will realize the closeness of God alongside who travels with piety, and we will prepare ourselves to walk joyfully in his holy fear. And we will thus hasten, as you did, Pentecost upon the world.