The following seven sections can be used as a basis for prayer, or simply as a reflection on key characteristics of Mary Ward's spirituality.

SECTION 1. 

From an early age. Mary’s integrity and singleness of purpose became apparent. Despite (or perhaps because of) constant separations from her parents and an unsettled childhood, she learnt to put her trust in God.  At first it was a childish desire to be in good favour and occasionally tinged with a rigorousness that owed more to fear than love, but Mary learnt from her mistakes and by the time she was fourteen she had learnt that ‘I will do these things with love and freedom, or leave them alone.’  This free access and trust in God marked all her future and allowed her to risk embarking on a whole new way for women to live and work in the Church – a way that few supported or encouraged at the time.

The motivating force in her desire to do the will of God was her love for God – it was not a servile or fearful obedience but rather the free and loving response to the God she loved above everything and with whom she had a relationship of ease and friendship.

Take a few minutes to read through some of her sayings and notice your reactions to them.

Which ones appeal to you? Do you know why?

Which ones feel strange or uncomfortable – and again can you understand why?

Mary Ward had to learn how to let go of her own control and resolute determination ‘to do the right thing’ and learn how to live comfortably with God, responding simply out of love and trust – In what ways does your following of the will of God need to adapt and deepen?

You might like to take Mary Ward’s prayer ‘O Parent of Parents’ and use it for a few days – adapt it using your own words…

‘My deepest longing in everything I do is that God be content with it.’  Resolutions October 10 1619

‘What does it matter what becomes of me, so long as I do what my Master sent me here for?’     Spa, 1638.

‘How happy a thing it is to love God and serve Him and seek Him da vero.’  Letter to Win. Bedingfield, October 29, 1633.

‘From an early age I have loved the virtue of integrity and therefore it is unnatural or rather impossible for me to act half-heartedly in anything pertaining to the things of God. The soul is invited to give all, and the response should be an entire surrender of self. I venture to declare that in my experience I see that the above dispositions are gifts from God to any person he chooses, but particularly to us women who seek to walk in the way of the spirit.’    Autobiography 1619

‘I begin with complying with God’s will when I experience things I would rather not face, especially regarding the handicap of ill-health.  In this area particularly I still fall short and have much to learn.’           Notes August 1628

Mary Ward’s Prayer

O Parent of parents, and Friend of all friends, without entreaty you took me into your care and by degrees led me from all else that at length I might see and settle my love in You.

What had I ever done to please You? Or what was there in me wherewith to serve You? Much less could I ever deserve to be chosen by You. O happy begun freedom, the beginning of all my good, and more worth to me than the whole world besides.

Had I never hindered Your will and working in me, what degrees of grace should I now have. Yet where as yet am I?

My Jesus, forgive me, remembering what You have done for me and whither You have brought me, and for this excess of goodness and love let me no more hinder Your will in me.           Autobiography 1619

 SECTION 2. 

If we look at Mary Ward’s life chronologically there seems to have been one unexpected setback after another.  Its very context was one of danger and uncertainty and despite all her efforts to discover and do God’s will, she seemed so often to meet with difficulty – whether it was her initial choice of religious order, her imprisonment, or her more personal struggles in persuading her family and friends to understand her vocation.  Yet, if we look at her as she approached her death, we see a woman full of serenity and joyful friendship with those closest to her – again despite seeming failure of her whole life’s work.  How did she come to this level of trust in God? Perhaps it was precisely through these seemingly never ending difficulties… as she learned to face her childhood anxieties, she clearly grows in her trust in God, learning how to play her part in it and yet leaving the result to God even when there seemed no possibility of things turning out right. 

POINTS FOR REFLECTION:

The Painted Life (c 1650) gives us some wonderfully graphic illustrations of key moments of trust and it might be helpful to use these rather than her words as the basis of our own reflection in this instance.

As you spend time with each picture, allow yourself to imagine how it must have been for Mary and her companions, and then look back into your own life and see if you can recognise moments when God was prompting you to similar levels of trust – albeit through very different circumstances…

As a child Mary faces her house burning down and with great presence of mind collects her two sisters and takes them to the relative safety of the stone chimney breast until her father can bring them to safety.  While there the three pray the rosary together.  Somehow, even at this early age, Mary was able to do as much as she could and then leave the rest to others in trust…

Can you remember moments when you could do no more and had to leave the rest to God?

Mary's conviction that Christ was calling her into active religious life meant that she had to leave England with no certainty even of what God wanted, let alone any human security. Yet her belief in God’s calling was so strong that not only did she set out but she convinced a small group of like minded women to come with her.

Reflect on times when somehow you had that inner conviction, despite perhaps very different external circumstances, that enabled you to do what you needed to – and may even have been sufficient to convince others to join you…

Throughout her life Mary crossed the Alps, usually in great poverty and danger, to plead her case in Rome and achieve Papal acceptance for her new order.  At times, as in this instance, her trust in God resulted in support both human and spiritual as she was given a carriage to ride in and a vision to reassure her of the goodness of her enterprise.  More commonly she had neither but still struggled across snow bound Alps and dangerous war torn countryside.

Reflect on an instance [probably less dramatic] when it has felt an equally daunting task to do/say/live what you felt you needed to…

SECTION 3. 

 Mary’s love of prayer was reassuringly gradual – one of her earliest stories tells of her ‘playing sports’ while praying with her grandmother, and later in her teens we hear her adjusting her rather too harsh and demanding rituals of prayer and penance, realizing that she wanted always ‘to act not out of fear, but solely from love’,   However from the beginning Mary was drawn to God and to a life of contemplation, and even at her most active and demanding periods of life, she would ensure there was time for prayer.  Her journeys over the Alps gave the small group of companions time for personal meditation but also for shared vocal prayer, and we know that on arrival one bitterly cold Christmas eve at the little town of Feldkirch, she spent the entire night in prayer – perhaps to the consternation of her companions!

POINTS FOR REFLECTION:

Take a few minutes to reflect on how your prayer has changed and developed over the years…
What has remained consistent?
What is it that you love about God?  Try to be specific.

SECTION 4. 

It would seem that she was given great graces, both visual and audible in prayer, but often these were for the founding of her Institute and to enlighten her on the way forward.  Her own prayer came to be more intimate and beyond easy expression in words – an encounter of deep love and trust.

A short description from her retreat notes gives us a wonderful insight into the freedom with which Mary spoke with God and the way in which God led her ever deeper into his love for her… she also teaches us that it is in our humanity and humour that we meet God every bit as much as in our ‘piety’!

‘He was very near me and within me, which I never perceived Him to be before.  I was moved to ask Him with great confidence and humility, what I came to know to whit, what He was.   I said, 'My God, what art Thou?  I saw Him evidently and very clearly go into my heart and little by little hid Himself (and there I perceive Him to be still in the same manner, my meditation being ended an hour since).  I endeavoured to go forward according to the points of the meditation, but could not, He held my heart, I could not work.  I would then have asked Him something, bid Him welcome, but He would not let.  I once asked, 'Will you lie there and do nothing?  And another time, 'Make that heart perfect and such as you would have it'; but beginning my speech in both, I could not possibly go forward, I saw plainly that His only will was that I should neither work nor talk, but hold my peace.  I was weary with kneeling, having nothing to do sitting down, this idleness of all powers made me wish to sleep.  I would have like a walk, but dared not without His leave.  I composed I myself handsomely to attend on such a guest, but God would have none of it; my body was weary, and yet I did nothing; my mind quiet and much contented; all noise, or other things that at other times helps devotion seemed then unpleasing.  An hour was gone in the space of one quarter   I left unwillingly, remaining still in the same disposition.’                  Retreat at Liege October 1619

SECTION 5. 

Mary Ward was clearly an attractive and remarkable woman; she was also very loving and valued her family and friends throughout her life.  As a young child she speaks of herself as shy and diffident, much preferring to be overlooked or thought of as a servant rather than noticed and made much of. Later it is clear that her sense of vocation overcame shyness and gave her a courage to face both brigands and bishops with equanimity - even in potentially dangerous situations.

Her deep love of her family and, in particular, her father meant that her choice to leave them perhaps for ever, to enter religious life was an extraordinarily costly one, while the joy of having her sister in the order was great. She clearly had great presence and attractiveness and throughout her life we hear of her impact on others.  She also had the capacity for deep and enduring friendship, and her letters are full of gentle, humorous comments to those she loved.

POINTS FOR REFLECTION:

Our relationships are often a source of great joy and also at times of great pain – and God can be found in both if only we see our lives as a whole.    Take some time thinking back over how you have been enriched and enlightened by others, and use that as a basis for your prayer – both the remembering and the conversation with God as a result of the remembering.

We have in this picture a detail of Mary and her parents.  Just sit with it for a while allowing it to speak to you in whatever way comes naturally… Use this as a basis for your prayer.

SECTION 6. 

However, we see that throughout her life Mary’s love for others was in and through God – the early influence of Jesuits in her life led her to write

‘Let your love be at all times rooted in God, and then remain faithful to your friend, and value her highly, even more highly than your life,’ and ‘Do not have a divided heart, for in that case you will be left by both God and man.’

She had discovered early on that clinging to those she loved was not the answer – finding the freedom to love them IN God enabled her friendships to grow and endure and have a quality about then that no amount of possessiveness would have brought.

POINTS FOR REFLECTION:

Are there areas in your relationships with others when your own needs/hopes have got in the way and where you need greater freedom? – again use this reflection as the basis of a conversation with God…

What do you long for in these relationships? Do you ever find yourself praying for this?

SECTION 7.  LOVE OF OTHERS 3

She wrote often about the need we have to show respect and compassion for the poor (an attribute she learnt from her father who would feed any who came to his door begging for food) and her love was not just words as we see in her comment in her Life:

‘I have found a good way to make our moneys hold out, to be sure to deny no poor body an alms’ Vita E 185. 

She was also immensely practical about her relationships with others, writing:

 ‘Do not endeavour so much to please your neighbour, as far more to be of use to him’.

And

‘Take away from no one what they love unless you give them instead something they love still better.’

POINTS FOR REFLECTION:

We often forget to reflect on our attitudes and behaviour to those we do not really know, yet whom we meet on the street and in the general business of life.  How do our fundamental attitudes to those who are less advantaged than ourselves – economically, socially, mentally, physically, emotionally – play themselves out in our everyday, and often largely unconscious, behaviour?

Mary would go to great lengths, and occasionally to the point of personal danger, to ‘be of use’ to those in need – remember moments when you too have reached out in small and large ways to others.  What would you say are the particular gifts you bring to others?