Sorority has many faces: sisterhood, sisterly love, friendship, support, growth pacts… it always requires stepping out of oneself to go to the other, equally welcoming and embracing. Sorority crosses history, often in silence, but this journey weaves immense bonds that sustain lives, struggles, families, neighborhoods. Discovering the traces of sorority in history and the world -those hidden traces so often- requires us to look with new eyes and to walk again on familiar paths with new shoes and very clean glasses.
Let’s look at Mary of Nazareth through this prism. We find traits that show us a sisterly woman who supported other women or the community in situations that required it. Luke, in the first chapter of his gospel, tells us that when the angel Gabriel announces her motherhood to her, he also tells her that her elderly cousin Elizabeth is also carrying a new life in her womb, which will bring joy to the lives of both of them. And the narrator says: *Mary rises quickly and goes to the hill country of Judea to see her cousin Elizabeth* (Luke 1:39). * We are told nothing in the account about the young woman’s motivations; we are told only that she went “in haste”… These motivations have had diverse interpretations over time.
Most of the time, glances have suggested that María is offering support to her older cousin during the pregnancy. I think that María, the younger woman, also wants to find support and advice from the older woman, given her unexpected situation. It is equally important to consider that in the tradition of Eastern churches, the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary is known in painting and the arts as the embrace. And this micro-narrative is almost always imagined in painting with two smiling and happy women meeting.
In any case, in this journey, in this encounter and in this coexistence (Luke speaks of three months), sisterhood is enacted. Women who belong to the same family in a “tribal” sense, women of different generations which makes us think that they are not spontaneous friends, women who inhabit distant territories… meet -at the initiative of the young Mary- to advise, support and live together amidst a wait that generates anxiety and expectations for both of them, and broadly for the future linked to their children:
Despite the absolutely androcentric literary context, this story is told in an entirely gynocentric way. The outpouring of the Spirit on Elizabeth and Mary takes place in the traditional female domestic space. Women are the actors who occupy the center; women are the ones who take the word to strongly transmit the good news that resonates; women also those who embody the mercy of God that they themselves proclaim. And they act in this way in the context of a meeting and affirming one another. (Elizabeth Johnson: TRUE SISTER OURS, Editorial Herder, Barcelona 2005, p. 302)
On Maria’s part, there is an impetus that leads her to dispense with her own care and situation, to help her older cousin who perhaps needs other, younger arms, or to seek refuge in the embraces of whoever may be able to give them because she lives similar circumstances. On Isabel’s part, there is an outlet to welcome, there is an embrace and an announcement of blessedness that reassures and gladdens her younger cousin.
We are clearly facing an encounter and a practice of sisterhood: an encounter and a relationship between women that empowers both, that makes them grow and places them before the world with new strengths. In these circumstances of fraternal friendship, one of the most beautiful songs that our tradition has given us is intoned: the *Magnificat*, which announces a new world, a world yet to be born in which inequalities and injustices will be remedied because the fortune of the poor will be blessed by that same God who has united them and called them to find each other in mutual and permanent support.
This hymn, for the most part, evokes the song of Hannah of Ramath in the first testament and the dance of Miriam, the sister of Moses, in the desert; it is thus inscribed in a tradition of feminine voices, which speaks to us of *affidamento*… that is, the sisterhood of Mary and Elizabeth, it is inscribed in a tradition.
The sorority opens to the world from these two women and invites us to multiply that support, to spread its perfume and its light illuminating the practices that unite and bless life to achieve healing destinies, destinies that transform situations that damage hope. After the birth of Jesus, the narrators take his mother out of our sight and focus on him, but we can think that the daily life of this young woman from Nazareth was a life in which her neighbors and her friends and close ones drank from her attitudes of support and permanent solidarity, that is, sororal attitudes.
When Jesus has grown and is about to go out into the world to fulfill his mission, we find Mary again in a new episode where she reveals her sisterly attitude once more. Beginning chapter 2 of the Gospel of John, we are told that Jesus, his friends, and family are present at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. The families of the newlyweds celebrate the event with joy. As the celebration unfolds and has not yet ended, the narrator says, they run out of wine.
It’s when Mary of Nazareth comes to act that she approaches her son and says in his ear: *You have no wine.* Jesus replies as if it were appropriate for some more guests: *What business is that of you and me?* Mary, sure of what she is doing, says to the person in charge of the drinks: *Do whatever he tells you.* How did Mary know that the wine had run out? Only an attitude **attentive to others, an attitude of going out of oneself…** allows one to discover the needs of others without them being explicitly stated. This attention and the willingness to respond to those needs are characteristic of a sisterly attitude in a woman. Because sisterhood always demands that you leave yourself and look at others.
We found Maria again, offering her sisterly support to others: the families of the newlyweds who were hosting the celebration.
The sisterhood of Mary, as the Gospels tell us, is expressed and practiced in situations of great need, such as the development of a pregnancy, but also in everyday life situations in which joy is fostered, such as the success of a family celebration. Looking at Mary of Nazareth in these attitudes leads us to think that we can invoke her in moments when we need a sisterly hand to support and guide us. An American theologian, Elizabeth Johnson, calls Mary true sister of ours… and points out in her reflection how Mary lived that sisterhood, that is, that sorority. This inspires us in how we can live it ourselves.
On the other hand, we must also bear in mind the long history of devotion to Mary in any of the traditions or advocations. Throughout the centuries, numerous women – more than men – have felt heard by her and attended to in their difficult hours. Beyond thinking about whether or not “miracles” exist, what I am interested in highlighting is the **strength** that peoples and women have received from their trust in Mary in the multiple devotions that have surrounded her figure.
Mainly from Marian devotion, Mary of Nazareth has been experienced as a mother; but it is important to discover that when she listens to the confidences that popular women permanently share with her or when she takes them by the hand and strengthens them in the daily paths of pain or joy… she is acting primarily as a friend/sister who accompanies in a culture in which motherhood is not always strength. The images of *Our Lady of Guadalupe, Las Lajas, Copacabana,* or *the Virgin of the Copper,* are witnesses of the search for resources and support by women in Latin America. And that search always has answers that are an active display of sorority.
We can walk towards an understanding of María, who listens to and accompanies us, like an older sister who presides over our faith and supports us fraternally on the paths of life. Let them be of pain or of joy. We can find in her the traces of a friendly face that points out new paths to our spirituality and our being in the world among family, neighbors, and friends, or as citizens.
Carmiña Navia Velasco
Casa Cultural Tejiendo Sororidades
December 2025
English version translated with AI