The image of Mary as a woman of hope in this year of jubilee counters some well-known cultural images — like Atlas, holding the world on his shoulders by himself, or Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill alone, knowing the boulder could easily slip and kill him if the task itself does not. Both Atlas and Sisyphus holding their burdens present symbols of the burdens that seem so heavy to us as humans. It’s a feeling Andra Day evokes in her song “Rise Up,” which begins with the words, “You’re broken down and tired / Of living life on a merry-go-round.” While this song ends with hope, Day hits upon the reality, faced by many, of a world of constant information and media, seeing the sinful systems of the world and losing hope.

What is hope? Spes Non Confundit, the bull of indiction for the Jubilee of Hope, states:

Everyone knows what it is to hope. In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring. Even so, uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt. Often we come across people who are discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could possibly bring them happiness. For all of us, may the Jubilee be an opportunity to be renewed in hope. God’s word helps us find reasons for that hope. (No. 1)

To wake up and stand is hopeful. To get out of bed daily is a hopeful human activity. Another day has been given as a blessing.

However, life can many times feel like a struggle, so thinking about an “empapamiento of hope” — a hope so soaking and saturating that it results in blisters and carries a stench — provides a way to approach daily hardships.

An Empapamiento of Hope

An empapamiento of hope is communal. Individually we cannot maintain such levels of hope; we must be able to depend on communal hope when ours grows weary. An empapamiento of hope is hope on a journey. It is hope for pilgrims of hope who may not know the path but are charting it together. As the hymn “Santa Maria del Camino” by Juan Espinosa says, “Aunque parezcan tus pasos / Inútil caminar / Tú vas haciendo caminos / Otros los seguirán” (“Even if your steps seem useless to walk, you can create the path and others will follow”).

The theologian Maria Pilar Aquino says of an empapamiento of hope: “Empapamiento refers to our ability of ‘saturating ourselves,’ of ‘imbuing ourselves,’ of ‘permeating ourselves’ with hope so that we explore more freely the open possibilities of our reality and bring about the open possibilities of our transforming imagination” (“A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology,” University of Texas Press, 2010). An empapamiento of hope is a hope for abundance.

Expanding on this concept, I like to tell the following short story in describing this topic to my students. When I was a child, I loved going out to get wet in the rain or in the sprinklers at the park. When I knocked on the door to go back into our house — because I knew I should not enter in my sopping condition — my mother would answer the door with a towel in hand and screech, “!Estas empapapada!” — “You are soaked!” She would then proceed to help me out of my clothes and dry myself. It was a ritual of care and made the play in the water all the more fulfilling.

It was not until I became an adult that I realized the many reasons my mother made sure I did not linger in this state of literal empapamiento. When you are soaking wet for an extended period of time, you begin to smell. You may become ill; you may develop a rash or other skin issues; you may become fatigued or angry because of these issues. Likewise, if one remains in a state of empapamiento of hope, you can expect fatigue, anger or other issues to arrive. The hope of a worker for justice is such hope. One can do more than what one thought was possible. Belief in the possibility of abundance from a, many times, limited life is such a hope. Knowing that limitations exist and still responding affirmatively to calls, still saying “yes,” is hopeful and faithful.

Discerning with the Angel

To look more specifically at Mary’s “yes,” I reflect with three Scripture passages from the Gospel of Luke. In the first passage from Luke, the angel visits Mary. Mary uses the beautiful grace of her free will to communicate and discern what God is asking. First, Luke introduces the angel like a daily occurrence, which maybe it was at the time. Maybe angels had visited Mary previously. She seems comfortable enough to ask her question: “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” (Lk 1:34). Mary pushes back and questions the possibility. She knows how pregnancy occurs. Mary asks one question and listens for the angel’s response: “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35).

Yet, the angel throws in what in my culture we call a pilón, a little something extra, an additional piece of information about what the work of the Holy Spirit has already accomplished: “And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived* a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren” (Lk 1:36). The angel is ensuring Mary receives the message that nothing is impossible with God. Then, Luke gives us Mary’s “yes” for the first time. Mary’s “yes” comes after a process of discernment while accompanied by the angel. Abundance is possible when one hopes.

October 2024 concluded the Synod on Synodality. Central to the process of this synod was the process of discernment known as listening in the Spirit. In this context, discernment is the process of seeking God’s will together through prayer, listening and dialogue, guided by the Holy Spirit. It involves understanding God’s dream for the community and interpreting the signs of the times. Discernment in synodality is not just about individual reflection but about a communal effort to discern God’s will through shared experiences and diverse perspectives (Instrumentum Laboris, No. 24).

Jesuit Father Gerry O’Hanlon, a member of the Irish Synodal Pathway, explained further, “Discernment is a kind of ‘felt knowledge’ — it involves feeling, emotion and desire as well as reason, concepts and logic.” Discernment involves deep and patient communication. Discernment requires an empapamiento of hope. Mary discerned and decided to work with God’s dream to incarnate Christ in the world through her physical creation of Jesus. She did not know what her response would mean to her own life, although the decision must have been very difficult already, knowing that she was not within what society deemed proper for a pregnancy. She made her decision in conversation with the angel. She sought more information and feedback from the angel. Within Mary’s discerned and faithful “yes” is hope that all will be well.

Living Out Hope

In a second example from Luke, note that the first thing Mary does is to go in haste to visit her cousin who is older and pregnant (1:39-42). Luke gives us no other details as to who may have accompanied Mary, how she may have traveled, what she carried with her. The journey from Nazareth to Judah in this time was about 80 to 100 miles through hills where the climb is about 1,000 feet. An empapamiento of hope is present that she will reach her cousin.

More than likely Mary traveled by donkey, but she may have done it on foot. She may have been alone, with Joseph or with others. They did not have much money. We know this because when Mary, Joseph and Jesus go to present Jesus and for Mary’s purification of blood ritual (Lk 2:22-24), Luke notes that they sacrifice two doves or pigeons. The law, which goes back to Leviticus, allows this sacrifice for those who cannot afford a lamb (Lv 12:6-8). According to Luke, the Holy Family was not wealthy.

However she traveled, Mary is in the first trimester of her pregnancy, and even carrying God cannot be easy for her hormonal human body. But she is moving in haste. The path is probably dangerous. I tend to think that she gave the angel a giant “No me digas!” when she was told Elizabeth was pregnant. She wanted to get the chisme, the news, straight from the source! She clearly thinks Elizabeth needs company and maybe some assistance.

Elizabeth greets Mary. They both see each other pregnant for the first time. Mary and Elizabeth live hopeful for abundance, the ability to create almost miraculously more out of little or nothing.

Finally, there are Mary’s magnifying words, which praise God but also annunciate her faithful hope about the limitations of the world. Mary is making Jesus while speaking these words. She must be exhausted and excited; anxious about her cousin and her own pregnancy while also having seen much already in the world. She is confident. She knows she’s a beloved daughter of God.

In the midst of anxiety, weariness and oppression, Mary lives an empapamiento of hope. She is saturated in hope to the point that the hope continues beyond the pain and the suffering, because she knows that she journeys with others in this difficult journey. Her heart will be pierced, but her faith for an abundance of life and the possibilities to bring about new life mean that she nurtures and sustains Jesus, suffers alongside him at the cross, greets the resurrected Christ, and prays with her community until the Holy Spirit arrives with an abundance of gifts (Acts 1:14). 

NEOMI DE ANDA serves as executive director of the International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton. She is also a tenured professor in the university’s Department of Religious Studies, where she teaches courses in religion, languages and cultures, Latinx and Latin American studies, race and ethnic studies, and women and gender studies. Dr. De Anda is a Catholic Lay Marianist and part of the Micah Theotokos Marianist Lay Community.