521. March 25, Annunciation of Our Lady (II)
Meditations no. 453 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Mary, predestined from all eternity to be the Mother of God, was enriched with the fulness of grace.
Donāt forget, my friend, that we are children. The Lady of the sweet name, Mary, is absorbed in prayer.
You, in that house, can be whatever you wish: a friend, a servant, an onlooker, a neighbourā¦ For the moment I donāt dare to be anything. I hide behind you and, full of awe, I watch whatās happening.
Once again, by the hand of our Father, we prepare ourselves to contemplate the scene of the Annunciation. Today we want to do it with more piety, with renewed affection, with greater desires to imitate our Lady, because we are commemorating precisely the sublime moment in which God made her vocation known to her. God sends as his ambassador no one less than an Archangel! How great is my Mother if God acts like this! When nations want to visit other nations, they send a representative. God sends the Archangel Gabriel from Heaven.
Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum Hail, full of grace. The angelās greeting reflects in a few words the extraordinary sanctity of our Lady. Pope Pius IX teaches that, when the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers considered that the Blessed Virgin was called āfull of graceā by the angel Gabriel - at the command and in the name of God himself - when he announced to her her most sublime dignity of being the Mother of God, they taught that, with this solemn and singular greeting which had never been heard before, there was made known the fact that the Mother of God was the seat of all divine graces, and that she was adorned with all the charisms of the Holy Spiritā¦ .
Whence their clear and unanimous opinion that the glorious Virgin, in whom āthe Almighty has done great thingsā (Luke 1: 49), stood out with such an abundance of heavenly gifts, with such fulness of grace and with such innocence, that she was like an ineffable miracle of God, or rather like the greatest of all miracles and a worthy Mother of God; and as she came as close to God himself as her condition of creature allowed, she was beyond all praise of both men and angels.
We face here a mystery of love. Human reason barely begins to comprehend. Only faith can shed some light on how a creature can be raised to such great heights, becoming a loving target for the delights of the Trinity. We know this is a divine secret. Yet, because our Mother is involved, we feel we can understand it more - if we are entitled to speak this way - than other truths of our faith.
How would we have acted, if we could have chosen our own mother? Iām sure we would have chosen the one we have, adorning her with every possible grace. That is what Christ did. Being all-powerful, all-wise, Love itself, (cf.Ā 1 John 4: 8), his power carried out his will
This is how Jesus Christ loves his Mother. And you, our Father invites us to consider, how do you honour our Lady? What do you offer her? How many aspirations do you say to her throughout the day? How do you overcome your wretchedness, remembering that you are a child of a Mother who is tota pulchra, most pure, immaculate?
The humility of our Lady, which her children should imitate.
On hearing the divine message, our Lady was greatly troubledā¦ and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. Christian people have always seen in this Gospel passage the great humility of our Mother. The Blessed Virgin, faced with these great gifts from Heaven, is troubled. How humble she is, the Immaculate, that treasure of graces: gratia plena! (Luke 1: 28). She is so humble that, at first sight, she cannot understand how God would send her an ambassador of that rank.
Some days later, on responding to the greeting of her cousin St Elizabeth, our Lady, inspired by the Holy Spirit, will acknowledge that God has done great things in her because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid. Behold, she adds, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed; because he who is mighty, he whose name is holy, has wrought for me his wonders. He has mercy upon those who fear him, from generation to generation.
There is no contradiction between confessing oneās own nothingness and acknowledging the graces that God pours into the souls of his chosen ones. Humility means looking at ourselves as we really are, honestly and without excuses. And when we realise that we are worth hardly anything, we can then open ourselves to Godās greatness: it is there our greatness lies.
How well our Lady, Jesusā Holy Mother, understood this! She, the most exalted of all Godās creatures that have existed or ever will exist upon this earth! Mary glorifies the power of our Lord, who has put down the mighty from their thrones and has exalted the lowly (Luke 1: 52). And she sings of how his divine providence has once again been fulfilled in her: because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid, behold henceforth all generations shall call me blessed (Luke 1: 48).
Mary becomes transformed in holiness in the depths of her most pure heart on seeing the humility of God: the Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you; and therefore the Holy One to be born of you shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1: 35). The Blessed Virginās humility is a consequence of that unfathomable depth of grace which comes into operation with the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in the womb of his ever Immaculate Mother.
The deep and joyful humility which fills the soul of Mary is a magnificent model for all Christians. Consider your own reaction when some trivial event disturbs you, not out of humility but out of pride. You think they are forgetting you, that they humiliate you, that they are suspicious of you, that they are not taking your qualities into accountā¦ .
You are children of the Blessed Virgin, our Father remarked, and you ought to be humble, because children should resemble their mother. Havenāt you noticed? Daughters resemble their mothers. Very often they have the same facial features, the same figure, the same way of speaking, of looking, of thinking and even of dressing. It is important for you to resemble our Lady; to be such good children that you become friends of the holy Virgin.
Then you will be able to ask her to give you the family spirit of Opus Dei: a great love for Holy Mary, Mother of Fair Love, Mother of God.
Our Lady is a model of correspondence to grace.
The Blessed Virgin is also our Mother. When she agreed, with her fiat! to be the Mother of the Redeemer, our Lady became the spiritual Mother of all mankind. Christ took mortal flesh in the very womb of his most chaste Mother, St Pius X explains, and, at the same time, he took to himself a spiritual body, made up of those who were to believe in him, in such a way that it can be said that Mary, bearing in her womb the Saviour, also bore all those whose life was contained in the life of the Saviour. All of us, then, who are united with Christā¦ , have come from the womb of Mary like a body united to its head. For this reason, in a spiritual and mystical sense, we are called children of Mary, and she is the Mother of all of us.
Today is an excellent occasion for us to learn in the school of our Mother, who is a model of correspondence to grace. If we contemplate her life, our Lord will give us the light we need to divinize our everyday existence. Throughout the year when we celebrate feasts dedicated to Mary and frequently on other days, we Christians can think of the Virgin. If we take advantage of these moments, trying to imagine how she would conduct herself in our circumstances, we will make steady progress. And in the end we will resemble her, as children come to look like their mothers.
First, let us imitate her love. Charity cannot be content with just nice feelings; it must find its way into our conversations and, above all, into our deeds. The Virgin did not merely pronounce her fiat; at every moment she fulfilled that firm and irrevocable decision. So should we. When Godās love gets through to us and we come to know what he desires, we ought to commit ourselves to be faithful, loyal - and then be so in fact. Because not everyone who says to me, āLord, Lord,ā will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven (Matt 7: 21).
We must imitate her natural and supernatural refinement. She is a privileged creature in the history of salvation, for in Mary the Word became flesh and dwelled among us (John 1: 14). But she is a reserved, quiet witness. She never wished to be praised, for she never sought her own glory. Mary is present at the mysteries surrounding the infancy of her Son, but these are normal mysteries, so to speak. When the great miracles take place and the crowds acclaim them in amazement, she is nowhere to be found. In Jerusalem when Christ, riding a little donkey, is proclaimed king, we donāt catch a glimpse of Mary. But after all have fled, she reappears next to the cross. This way of acting bespeaks personal greatness and depth, the sanctity of her soul.
Following her example of obedience to God, we can learn to serve delicately without being slavish. In Mary we donāt find the slightest trace of the attitude of the foolish virgins, who obey, but thoughtlessly. Our Lady listens attentively to what God wants, ponders what she doesnāt fully understand and asks about what she doesnāt know. Then she gives herself completely to doing the divine will: Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word (Luke 1: 38). Isnāt that marvellous? The blessed Virgin, our teacher in all we do, shows us here that obedience to God is not servile, does not bypass our conscience. We should be inwardly moved to discover the freedom of the children of God (cf.Ā Rom 8: 21).