We can learn a lesson from Our Lady, because she certainly was a true contemplative and found God within Herself. She could be described as simply an echo of God. God spoke a word . . . full of depth and beauty, which was . . . the intimate name of Mary. And out of nothingness, out of complete lowliness, the perfect echo of that word cam back to God Who spoke. That echo was Mary saying “God” in a Marian way with all her soul. That precious soul came, beautiful and with free will, from the creative power of God. There was nothing in Mary that was not a deliberate willed reflection back to God of all that He said in naming Her. God was Her beginning and Her end. She was and is a pure, lucid, beautiful echo of God’s word, and She knew it. Our Lady did not think that She had built herself up in order to come close to God. “He that is mighty has done great things for Me,” She said, and She saw Herself as the little handmaid of the Lord. . .
You are in fact nothing but an echo of the voice of God. You are made of nothing; that is what God made you out of. As long as God speaks, the echo of His word persists, but if He became silent, then the echo would simply be nothing. It is very wonderful to be an echo of the voice or word of God. God says your own intimate, individual name, not only as a label to say who you are, but as a resounding description of what He wants you to be, and so that is what you are. He lovingly calls you Mary or Elizabeth or Michael or whatever your personal hidden name really is, and He means you, through and through, and out of . . . absolute nothingness, you pop up into existence . . . as a living echo of that lovely developing word. . .
You are all echo. If you hold on to yourself as being your own property, if you hold on to anything you possess as your own, if you claim full possession of anything you do, in all these cases that part of you ceases to reflect back to God. It is not an echo of God. It ceases to be part of your true self and becomes a blemish or imperfection or false growth on the self that you ought to be. Everything must be referred back to God, offered to God to Whom it belongs, because we are echoes of Him.
Everything you are and everything you have and everything you do must be sent back to God, and then you are a sweet sound singing out the Magnificat to the Lord. If we have complete poverty of spirit, holding on to nothing as our own, and return everything straight to God, then we become very rich, and God does great things for us. The echo and the divine voice are united.
A contemplative is so aware of his nature as an echo, . . . so conscious of being nothingness resounding to God’s voice, that he is aware only of God’s voice when he looks at himself. Far from feeling substantial and that he has built himself up, the contemplative looking at himself in the depths of his consciousness is only aware of God creating him and loving him. Knowing himself deeply by self-awareness, he sees right through himself to God. . .
Each of you is there at this very moment because God is calling out with love your most intimate personal name, and you echo back to Him all that He sings out. You do it by being what you are and being glad to be that . . . deliberately for Him. You do it by having what you possess as personal gifts . . . and doing what you have to do . . . only for God, to give Him glory, to please Him.
Be then a pure echo of God. Be the true sound of that particular poetry that God speaks in describing and creating you. And for your prayers, which are the closest reflection of all that you give back to God, remember that they themselves do not really have you for their ultimate source. Your prayers are the Holy Spirit praying in you, and you echo back to God the lovely things He says.
No wonder Christian life is a life of joy and confidence and thanksgiving. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He that is mighty has done great things for me.
