In his book Mary Today, Trappist monk M. Basil Pennington, O.S.C.O., reflects on how Mary’s contemplative openness shaped her Divine Motherhood, and how she challenges us to likewise be transformed:
Mary had the courage to be a mother. It takes a lot of courage to bring a child into this world today and to be ever present to that child no matter what happens. Mary had the courage to be a virgin. How many…  today would dare to proclaim themselves as a virgin, standing in their native dignity, not allowing themselves to be used? Mary dared to proclaim her true dignity, her God-given role among the people of God, even among those who could not or would not understand and would probably respond with derision. Mary dared to stand by the side of her Son when he allowed himself to be totally identified with the oppressed, disgraced, and degraded. Mary stayed, a source of strength and peace, in the midst of the disciples, as a woman teaching them more by example than by word how to open themselves through prayer and waiting for the coming empowerment of the Spirit…
[Mary] challenges us to open ourselves to experience our humanity in its fullness, to let both our masculinity and our femininity emerge, to be whole persons who create a whole Church, allowing the fullness of humanity to be divinized within it.
Mary challenges us to face the ordinariness of our lives and to believe in the ordinariness of our lives. It was in leading, for the most part, a very ordinary life that she fulfilled the greatest mission that has ever been given to a human person and that she prepared herself for those times when she would, in some way, have to step out of the ordinary and perform the heroic.
Mary challenges us to walk in her way, the way of the yes of love. Her advice to us: Do whatever he tells you.