In all the four gospels, if I remember right, Mary is heard to speak only four times: first to the angel but only after he had spoken to her once and yet again; second to Elizabeth, when the voice of Mary’s greeting caused John to leap in her womb and Elizabeth magnified Mary, but Mary was concerned rather to magnify God; third to her twelve-year-old son when she and his father had been looking for him sorrowing; and a fourth time at the marriage-feast when she spoke to her son and the servants. And this speech was the surest evidence of her inherent gentleness and virginal modesty. You can see that she considered the shame of others as her own and so could not refrain from pointing out the lack of wine. When she was chided by her son, being gentle and humble of heart she neither answered him nor lost hope but urged the servants to do whatever he commanded them.
This is the sure sign of divine grace acting in the hearts of those who are chosen, that humility may not make them cowardly, nor greatness of soul make them arrogant. The two work together with the result that greatness does not turn into self-exaltation but rather that humility increases, so that those who are chosen might be found the more devout and not ungrateful to the Giver of gifts, and likewise, that cowardice does not take anything away from humility. The less one presumes on one’s own virtues, the more one trusts in divine strength.
Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons for the Autumn Season, Sunday within the Octave of the Assumption, v. 10, 13 (CF 54, p. 64, 67)