7 Virtues of Mary: A Devotional Journey - When Prayer Becomes Life
Updated: Sep 18
7 Virtues of Mary: A Devotional Journey is an invitation to look at Mary not only as a model of holiness, but as a Mother who teaches us how prayer can become life.
Seven Virtues of Mary: A Devotional Journey for Life Inspirations
I find Mary’s virtues in everyday life - much more than seven of them! They reflect especially in the wonderful women God has placed along my path. There have been so many, definitely more than seven! 😊
Only now, after all these years and from a different perspective, I can see more clearly what those encounters gave me. At the time, they were simply part of a busy life, full of people, relationships, conversations, and shared experiences. Now, in this new season of my life - with more personal time, in a different place, and more silence - there is room to see their meaning differently. I can return to those memories, experience their beauty again, and bless each of these women in my heart, perhaps many times over.
When I started writing this blog, I found myself returning to those experiences of friendship and relationship with women. But this time, I wanted to look beneath the surface and enter a somewhat different reality.
Today, I want to share with you some of what I am discovering there - new reflections and new kinds of relationships.
7 Virtues of Mary: A Devotional Journey for Presence and Time Fully Lived
Relationships grow through presence. And presence needs time - not simply time that is counted (chronos), but time that is truly lived (kairos): time spent with one another, with another person, and with God.
What is born in prayer - what God changes in us, what He reveals to the heart does not remain hidden there. It begins to show itself in the way we live. This is where virtue comes in. Virtue becomes a way of being, a way of responding, a way of life.
This is how Mary lived.
She was full of grace, attentive to God, listening to His word and keeping it in Her heart. We know very little about the details of Her everyday life, but the Gospel gives us a glimpse of the woman She was. When something happened that She did not understand, She did not need to have all the answers immediately. She kept those things in Her Heart and pondered them.
Her faith gave direction to the way She saw life. Her hope carried Her forward when the road was difficult. And Her love always found expression in concrete, tangible action.
Mary’s life was largely hidden, away from the noise and demands of the world. She knew how to step back from what was happening around Her, bring Her emotions into the silence, and listen with the ears of Her Heart. With that Heart She heard every whisper of the Creator and understood God’s action within Herself.
There, in that silence, She came to know God personally.
And this kind of encounter is something we cannot simply explain to someone else. At some point, we have to enter it ourselves. We have to enter kairos - that lived time in which what we experience with our senses can become something deeper, something spiritual, something that eventually begins to bear fruit in the way we live.
Those who followed Mary’s path discovered something similar. They did not become virtuous simply by trying harder or forcing themselves to become better people. They allowed God to work in them, to shape their hearts, and to bring forth what He had already placed there.
That is why I want to pause with the seven virtues found in the chaplet attributed to Mary - not as seven ideals we have to achieve, nor as another list of things we should be doing, but as fruits of a relationship.
Seven rays of one Light - first kindled quietly in the heart, and then gradually becoming visible in the way we live.
Seven Virtues of Mary: A Devotional Journey for 7 Inspirations in Prayer
I want to tell you, however, not about my friends, acquaintances, or one-time encounters with Miriam - Mary, who comes to me in their hearts - for that is how I see Her and them. Today I want to speak of another path - more generally about the women of fire and light from the post below. I recommend that you perhaps look there first, so you can better understand my choice. Besides, on the paths of faith you will find descriptions of many such encounters.
My women of light and fire do not run away from their own story, weakness, questions, temperament, body, emotions, or darkness. Holiness for them does not consist in creating an ideal version of themselves. First they come to know themselves in God - in the body, in questions, in fear, in passion, in silence, and in suffering. They are women of flesh and blood: sensitive, delicate, aware of their identity, and fighting.
They lived “between light and shadow.” Before anything else, they listened to the Voice of God in silence before they spoke publicly - each in her own unique, individual way.
Their path began exactly where they stood - even when they felt too weak, too ordinary, or too wounded. They did not overshadow God with themselves; they shone with His radiance and helped others keep going.
Hildegard matured in hiddenness. She wrote: “The human being is a vessel full of light” - she integrated body, spirit, silence, and sound.
Beatrice wrote of the love that “transforms the soul into what it loves.”
Faustina lived an ordinary life, yet she descended into the depths of the heart with “Jesus, I trust in You.”
Teresa of Ávila knew the taste of spiritual fire and struggle.
Thérèse of Lisieux - “my way is trust and love.”
Edith sought the truth for a long time before she found her path - “all the way to Golgotha,” through philosophy, atheism, her Jewishness, the convent, and finally the offering of herself.
Alicja began her deep transformation only in mature age. She offered herself to God and heard: “Let Me love you.”
All of them refused to copy patterns; each one was an original. They teach that holiness is the removing of illusions and the courage to be oneself in God. This is not sentimentalism, but it is heroic fidelity in smallness.
These are stretches of the road that also cross our contemporary lives.
For the most important things happen inside, before they become visible on the outside. Their strength flows from the Depth.
Fragility, fear, emptiness, the feeling of smallness are not obstacles, but the very place where God acts. Thérèse knew her own helplessness and the God who works miracles out of weakness. Faustina struggled with the sense of her own littleness. Hildegard struggled with illness and misunderstanding. Beatrice, Faustina, Thérèse, Alicja - each in her own way - show that a delicate heart can have enormous endurance - what a paradox: sensitivity and strength!
All of them show that the path begins exactly where you are.
They allowed the love of God to transform the way they looked at themselves, at others, and at their own lives.
None of these women romanticizes suffering. Yet none of them allows suffering to rob her of meaning. From pain can arise truth, love, compassion, maturity, and self-giving. This is a direction that time cannot destroy - it remains always relevant. By our own power, without the support of God, we cannot distinguish good from evil, happiness from unhappiness, or advance on the spiritual path. He is that active Love and Mercy pulsing with life.
Through the prism of their stories, I can discover the truth on my own path.
They live from the depths, yet they do not pretend to be someone else. They passed through their own interior, dared to look truth in the eyes, and allowed God to transform their sensitivity, wounds, intellect, body, everyday life, and love into light.
These are not distant saints on an altar, but spiritual companions - present at every call and masters of the interior path. They lived what I am seeking - the fullness of being a woman in God: body and spirit, mind and heart, weakness and courage.
They show that femininity and holiness interpenetrate in everyday life, where God hides miracles. They help us walk “like friends” - with a gentle touch of thought, a smile, a word that moves us as support, so that we may reach where they have already arrived.
It is not about copying their stories, but about the courage to walk our own path with God. They only help us shine with His light, not their own. God shapes us through the desire for good and the ability to see beauty in simplicity. You too are an original, and you have your own meaning and purpose before you.
The bridge between them and me - or you - is made of the same tensions: the longing for authenticity, sensitivity, questions about meaning, the struggle with fear and the sense of not being enough, the need for silence and trust, and at the same time the fire that will not let us remain standing still.
Mary as Source and Mirror
The key that connects these stories is the presence of Mary. She is the first and most perfect image of a life completely open to God. In Her the Word became flesh.
All these women of fire and light are Her reflections in different eras and personal histories. Each of them reflects something of what is complete in Mary. They do not shine with their own radiance, but reflect Her light, which in turn reflects the light of Christ. That is why Mary will continue to be a reflection in their lives - and in mine, and in yours.
Seven Virtues of Mary - Reflections with Scripture and the Prayer of Women of Faith, Fire and Light
I do not look at these virtues as seven qualities or traits that I somehow have to produce in myself. For me, they are the fruit of a relationship with God. Prayer, listening, and daily responding to grace gradually shape the way we live.
The reflections “Seven Virtues of Mary,” rooted in Sacred Scripture and in the words of these seven women who have already walked this path, are meant to serve exactly that purpose: prayer, meditation, and the daily practice of growing - so that we may shine with the radiance of God’s Love.
So it is not only about coming to know Mary, nor about admiring holy women. It is about seeing how faith can become life - mine and yours - in practice, in the small events of everyday living.
I invite you now to immerse yourself in the spirituality of Mary through these reflections based on Scripture and the words of women who followed in Her footsteps. May you find inspiration and peace in the heart of the Mother of God. 💛💕
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🌷1. Faith - as lived by St. Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
Mary believed when nothing made human sense. She said yes before she understood
Edith Stein, Jewish philosopher, convert, Carmelite and martyr, lived this exact faith in the shadow of the Holocaust. She wrote that faith is not a feeling but a grace that lets us accept God’s revealed truth even when the road disappears into darkness. She trusted completely and walked into Auschwitz with the same “fiat” that Mary spoke in Nazareth.
“It is a grace when the message of faith, God’s revealed truth, reaches us. It is grace that enables us to accept this message of faith and to become believers…”
St. Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross
Bible verse Luke 1:45
“Blessed is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill His promises to her.”
Meditation:
In Her "yes," Mary trusted God's plan without knowing the details. What areas of my life require this kind of trust?
🌷2. Hope - as lived by Alicja Lenczewska
At the foot of the cross, Mary held hope when every visible promise seemed dead.
Alicja Lenczewska, a Polish mystic of the 20th century, lived every single day in that same hope. In communist Poland, through illness and suffering, she heard Jesus say,
“Do not lose hope, for I am with you in every moment.”
Her spiritual journals became a living testimony that hope is not optimism; it is the quiet certainty that God is faithful even when we see nothing.
Mary stood by the cross in silent hope, believing in the promises of resurrection even amid darkness and death.
Bible verse Romans 8:25
“But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
Meditation:
Mary teaches me to hope not in outcomes, but in God Himself. Where is God inviting me to choose hope over despair?
🌷3. Love (Caritas) - as lived by Blessed Beatrice of Nazareth
Mary “went with haste” to serve Elizabeth (Luke 1:39). Her whole life was self-giving love.
Beatrice, a 13th-century Cistercian nun, wrote The Seven Ways of Holy Love and lived them. Love for her was not sentiment — it was total immersion in God that overflowed into a complete gift of self. She showed that Mary’s charity is possible: a heart so consumed by love that it burns for others without counting the cost.
Bible verse John 15:12
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
Meditation:
Love for God and others begins with small acts of kindness. How can I offer charity like Mary today?
“Love so powerfully moves the heart and immerses it in God that the soul experiences radiant joy, sweetness, and fullness, so that the heart is wholly consumed by love.”
Blessed Beatrice of Nazareth, Seven Ways of Holy Love (essence of her mystical description).
🌷4. Humility - as lived by St. Faustina Kowalska
Mary called herself “the handmaid of the Lord” even though She carried the Son of God (Luke 1:38, 1:48). She did not seek her own glory but always pointed to God.
Faustina, a simple Polish nun and Apostle of Divine Mercy, repeated daily:
“I am the Lord’s little one.”
She allowed Jesus to use her littleness as the channel of His greatest mercy. Her humility opened the floodgates of grace - exactly as Mary’s did.
You can read more about humility in St. Faustina's life in this post:
Bible verse Luke 1:48:
“He has looked upon His handmaid’s lowliness.”
Meditation:
True humility is knowing who I am in God’s eyes - nothing more, nothing less. What does Mary’s humility teach me about my identity?
“Humility - this is the truth. When the soul recognizes its own wretchedness, then God’s grace descends upon it.”
St. Faustina Kowalska - Diary, 1306
🌷5. Patience as lived by St. Teresa of Ávila
Mary waited - during pregnancy, in exile, in Nazareth, the flight into Egypt, and the long hours at the cross. Her patience was not passive, but full of quiet strength.
Bible verse Psalm 37,7
“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.”
Meditation:
Mary’s patience encourages me to stay rooted when I want to run. Where is God calling me to be still?
Teresa reformed the Carmelite Order amid fierce opposition and illness. Her famous words became her lived reality: “Let nothing disturb you… Patience obtains everything.” She taught that patience is not passive waiting - it is active, loving trust that God is working even when we see no progress.
“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things pass; God does not change. Patience obtains everything.”
St. Teresa of Ávila
🌷6. Perseverance - as lived by St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Mary never left the path God had marked out for her — from the Annunciation to Pentecost.
Bible verse Hebrews 12:1-2
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.”
Meditation:
Perseverance is born from love and vision. What “race” am I tempted to abandon—and how does Mary inspire me to keep going?
Thérèse, the “Little Flower,” was sick and weak, yet she chose to do every tiny thing with great love until the very end. She proved that perseverance is not heroic feats but fidelity in little things - exactly the way Mary lived in the hidden years of Nazareth.
“God would never inspire me with desires which cannot be realized; so in spite of my littleness, I can hope to be a saint.”
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
🌷7. Obedience - as lived by St. Hildegard of Bingen
Mary’s obedience was total, joyful, and free, not driven by fear, but rooted in love.
Bible verse Luke 1:38
“Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Meditation:
Obedience is not submission to rules, but a response to a relationship. In what area of my life am I called to respond like Mary?
Hildegard, a 12th-century abbess, mystic, composer and Doctor of the Church, obeyed the visions God gave her even when powerful men opposed her. Her whole life was one great “yes” to the Holy Spirit written down in music, science, theology and the founding of monasteries. She showed that true obedience leads to incredible fruitfulness.
“I, the shining Obedience, call: come unto me, fair daughters, and I will lead you back to the homeland and to the royal kiss.”
From Ordo Virtutum (Hildegard of Bingen)
When Prayer Becomes Life
Each of these women of faith allowed God to shape her heart, and the virtues became their way of being. St. Edith Stein discovered in faith the direction and light for her life, as testified in her work The Science of the Cross.
Alicja Lenczewska allowed hope to shape her life. Her trust in God’s presence transformed each day into an experience of spiritual light, which she recorded in Świadectwo, a spiritual journal, and Słowo pouczenia, another collection of spiritual notes and guidance.
Blessed Beatrice of Nazareth made love complete self-giving, and her work, The Seven Ways of Holy Love, records a life fully devoted to God.
St. Faustina, through humility, opened her heart to grace, as seen in Her Diary, where daily communion with God becomes a source of spiritual life.
St. Teresa of Ávila taught patience in daily trials in The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection. She shows how perseverance in prayer leads to the depth of the spirit. St.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux discovered perseverance in small daily choices, and Her Story of a Soul bears witness to life in God’s presence through ordinary acts of love.
Finally, obedience in St. Hildegard of Bingen allowed her to fully entrust herself to God’s will, as reflected in the Book of Divine Works / Liber Divinorum Operum, showing how prayer and obedience become a way of life. Her visions and writings in Scivias show how trust in God’s presence can transform everyday life.
Their lives show that prayer is not just words, but a whole way of being, daily surrender, abiding in God’s presence, and faithfulness to His guidance. Like Mary, they made the virtues their life, allowing them to radiate into the world and touch others with their presence, love, and the light that arose in their hearts.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart 💛 for being here with me on this journey.
Thank you for every moment you paused with these words, for your open heart, and for allowing yourself to walk with me through these reflections. Your presence made this path even more alive and full of meaning.
May what we have shared here continue to work gently within you and bring you peace.💛
As we continue to develop the theme of virtues in the coming posts, may these biblical reflections and the real lives of holy women become a mirror for our own hearts.💛
May we, like them, allow Mary’s virtues to stop being beautiful ideas and start becoming the way we live. 💛
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As you can see for yourself, Her virtues were not formed in comfortable circumstances. They shone most clearly in moments of uncertainty, loss, suffering, waiting, and surrender. The Seven Sorrows allow us to see something of Mary's virtues not as beautiful ideas, but as virtues lived in the flesh.
This post explores the deeper meaning of virtue as a state of being - what Aristotle called the excellence of the soul and how the virtues, as practical expressions of that state, shape our journey toward lasting joy.
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