On November 16, in the middle of my attention being devotedly focused on Marcel Văn and clerical abuse, Pope Francis gave another little address where the focus was contemplative prayer and contemplative life.

In this case, the Holy Father was speaking to participants of a conference on the Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda promoted by the Pontifical International Marian Academy. As with his address to the Little Sisters of Jesus and his catechesis on Saint Charles de Foucauld in the past few months, the pope broke discussion into a trio of topics. In the former case, he organized thoughts around the search for God, the testimony of the Gospel, and love of the hidden life; in the latter case, falling head over heals in love of God, proximity, and silence. Now, in his brief talk on Mother Ágreda, Pope Francis highlight three themes of contemplative life: silence, relationship, and mission (the latter of which connects to the pope’s recent apostolic exhortation on the Little Flower).

I certainly wouldn’t dissaude anyone form checking out the entirety of the papal address to participants of a conference on the Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda promoted by the Pontifical International Marian Academy. But if you don’t go as far as that, you may at least like to check out these main paragraphs and compare them to what Pope Francis has already been saying about contemplative life in the recent past:

Mother Ágreda was an exceptional woman, whom you wished to define as “in love with Scripture”, “Marian mystic” and “evangelizer of America”. These titles made me reflect on three lessons that the contemplative woman can give to the Church. The first lesson relates to silence, the attitude of listening, to welcome the voice of the Beloved, the eternal Word of the Father, in the heart. It is an attitude for everyone, but it is especially feminine: women know how to listen and have a special vocation for listening. It is surprising how, despite being without a specific formation, some religious sisters have attained a noteworthy knowledge of Scripture and, in the school of prayer, have drunk from it as though it were a living fountain. Therefore, to describe them as “in love with” Scripture is an expression that goes beyond praising its use in their writings; it is seeing Christ Himself who speaks to them and speaks to us through His Word, asking that, following Mary’s example, we keep everything in our hearts (cf. Lk 2:51).

The second lesson is the mystic, that is, a relationship with God that is born from this attitude of listening, from this incarnate reading of the Sacred Scripture. An experience, we might say, ecstatic, but by “ecstasy” we mean coming out of ourselves, coming out of our comforts, out of the selfish ego that always tries to dominate us. It is a matter of making room for God, so that, docile to the Holy Spirit, the King’s “overseer”, we can welcome Him into our home. This is the example of Mary, who welcomed Him into her Immaculate Heart before she welcomed Him into her virginal womb. In this sense, contemplatives teach us, through a path of asceticism, abandonment and fidelity, the joy of living only for Him. And sometimes contemplation is done in silence, before the Lord, in silence. And in this world that is always full – of things, words, news, a whole industry of exterior communication – interior communication, in silence, is so necessary.

The third lesson is mission. Mother Ágreda and the Conceptionist religious sisters, who were the first cloistered nuns to arrive in America – I don’t know if they arrived with Christopher Columbus, but not long after – give us the proof of this missionary spirit in contemplative life, which Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus would later highlight. It is not a coincidence that another great mystic, Saint Rose of Lima, is the first saint of the continent.