FFC SAINTS AND MARY
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March 25
Annunciation
of the Lord
The feast of the Annunciation goes back
to the fourth or fifth century. Its central focus is the Incarnation: God has
become one of us. From all eternity God had decided that the Second Person of
the Blessed Trinity should become human. Now, as Luke 1:26-38 tells us, the
decision is being realized. The God-Man embraces all humanity, indeed all
creation, to bring it to God in one great act of love. Because human beings
have rejected God, Jesus will accept a life of suffering and an agonizing
death: “No one has greater love than
this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
Mary has an important role to play in God’s plan. From all eternity God destined her to be the mother of Jesus and
closely related to him in the creation and redemption of the world. We could
say that God’s decrees of creation and redemption are joined in the decree of
Incarnation. Because Mary is God’s instrument in the Incarnation, she has
a role to play with Jesus in creation and redemption. It is a God-given role.
It is God’s grace from beginning to end. Mary becomes the eminent figure she is
only by God’s grace. She is the empty space where God could act. Everything she
is she owes to the Trinity.
She is the virgin-mother who fulfills
Isaiah 7:14 in a way that Isaiah could not have imagined. She is united with
her son in carrying out the will of God (Psalm 40:8-9; Hebrews 10:7-9; Luke
1:38).
Together with Jesus, the privileged and
graced Mary is the link between heaven and earth. She is the human being who
best, after Jesus, exemplifies the possibilities of human existence. She
received into her lowliness the infinite love of God. She shows how an ordinary
human being can reflect God in the ordinary circumstances of life. She
exemplifies what the Church and every member of the Church is meant to
become. She is the ultimate product of the creative and redemptive power of
God. She manifests what the Incarnation is meant to accomplish for all of us.
Comment:
Sometimes spiritual writers are accused of putting
Mary on a pedestal and thereby discouraging ordinary humans from imitating her.
Perhaps such an observation is misguided. God did put Mary on a pedestal and
has put all human beings on a pedestal. We have scarcely begun to realize the
magnificence of divine grace, the wonder of God’s freely given love. The marvel
of Mary—even in the midst of her very ordinary life—is God’s shout to us to
wake up to the marvelous creatures that we all are by divine design.
Quote:
“Enriched from the first instant of her conception
with the splendor of an entirely unique holiness, the virgin of Nazareth is
hailed by the heralding angel, by divine command, as ‘full of grace’ (cf. Luke 1:28). To the heavenly messenger she
replies: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy
word’ (Luke 1:38). Thus the daughter of Adam, Mary, consenting to the word of
God, became the Mother of Jesus. Committing herself wholeheartedly and impeded
by no sin to God’s saving will, she devoted herself totally, as a handmaid of
the Lord, to the person and work of her Son, under and with him, serving the
mystery of redemption, by the grace of Almighty God” (Dogmatic Constitution
on the Church, 56).
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