The relationship on earth between Jesus and Mary is ineffable, belonging to a plan far above any other, the most beautiful relationship after the Trinity.

It is the relationship between the Mother of a son who is God and the child of an immaculate mother, and which carries all the most tender and exquisite expressions that nature provided in both, with an ever more perfect obedience of her will to the will of Love Most High.

She had him in her heart; she raised him as a child and adolescent. She was at his side in the fullness of his youth, when every young boy who is becoming a man discloses his most secret aspirations to the pure love of a mother who becomes at that moment his first friend.

He stayed with her in his maturity until the age of thirty, and almost nothing is known of what they told each other.

He then spent three years with others to found the Church and to accomplish his mission, sealing it with his blood on the wood of the cursed.

Three years in contrast to thirty. Three of which we know something. Thirty of which we know almost nothing.

It is a mystery.

The mystery of love.

The mystery of love divine and human between two hearts of flesh, clothed in virginity. No one ever knew.

We will know something of it in heaven to the extent that we loved and followed them on earth.

Chiara Lubich

C. Lubich, Essential Writings (New York: New City Press, 2006), pp. 138-139.