The book between faith and life of an Ursuline nun

Naike Monique Borgo is a young nun who has been involved in communication for the diocese of Vicenza for ten years. She is of the Ursulines of the Sacred Heart of Mary and has now written La grammatica di Maria [The Grammar of Mary], which is both a book and also something more besides, punctuated as it is by an alternation of Gospel passages, meditations, life experiences and certain images.

In the preface, Chiara Giaccardi writes, “Mary is, above all, a grammar of connection. We see this in the visitation story, which is a celebration of the indissoluble bond between genders, generations, ordinary and extraordinary history, the human and the divine, the everyday and eternity.

In addition, it is also a grammar of paradox. Mary helps us, with her whole life and not only with her words, to inhabit with fruitfulness the tension between vitality and social forms, humility and boldness, the law and overflowing fullness [...]. 

In fact, Mary gives us a grammar of surplus, that “more” which is the good news to be brought to all. As Naike writes, the grammar of the ordinary is disrupted by the irruption of the extraordinary, which transfigures the everyday and makes it immense”.

The author’s everyday life brings her into contact with people who are different and therefore unique. The young mother, the experienced journalist, the university-educated prisoner, the street violinist and former music teacher, and working women, professionals, mothers, wives, and nuns.

The afterword is by Francesco Occhetta, a Jesuit, lecturer, professional journalist, and communicator himself. “In Scripture, - he writes - the verses that speak of Mary are very few. On the few occasions she appears in the Gospels, she is in the shadow, always in relation to her Son; she is open and listening to God's will to remain faithful to his “yes”.

Yet, when those few verses are contemplated and experienced by the disciples of all times, private revelations or erudite books like Sister Naike’s are generated. Marian spirituality taught by simple and good hearts prolongs and interprets the revealed Word, and sets it down in time and becomes flesh in those who receive it. It speaks with the language and faces of our time”. (WCW)