Mary in the Gospel of Luke: Part X: The Annunciation

The Annunciation

In  the last several issues of the QUEEN, we have been examining the beautiful Lucan description of the annunciation. In today’s installment, we reach the final verse of this section, the climactic point of the drama: Mary’s total acceptance of God’s will for her.
Our Lady’s faith-surrender to God will be considered under two aspects: an expression of her personal faith, and second, the expression of the faith of the people of God summarized in Mary. The first will be studied in this article, the second in the next article within The QUEEN.

I. Mary’s Personal Surrender

The Blessed Mother’s fiat (“let it be to me”) has to be put into context in order to grep its meaning. Three points especially have to be noted concerning the circumstances in which she proclaimed her acceptance of whatever God wanted of her. They not only clarify Mary’s Yes but also shed light on our surrender to the Lord.

1. Mary Is Already Married to Joseph

Her plans for the future have already been made. Although not yet living with her husband, she had “signed the papers.” According to the custom of her people, she was waiting for the town celebration – usually six months to a year after the legal espousal – when Joseph would carry her over the threshold and they would live happily forever after.

As dramatized by the inspired author, Luke, Mary is surprised and upset at the appearance of Gabriel. She is bewildered by his message for it’s apparent to her that God is tearing up all her plans and also the plans of her husband Joseph. As a pregnant married woman who had not yet lived with her husband, she would, so it appears, be liable to condemnation as an unfaithful woman. The surrender asked of her is painful, sacrificial.

The fiat of Mary is indicative of our own faith life. Our baptismal surrender to God aligns us completely with God’s will. We have no plans “of our own,” no future that we have “carved out for ourselves.” We belong to the Lord. It is to be taken for granted that God will tear up “our plans” for his dispositions for us are far greater than anything we could devise. That is not to say that it is not painful. The cross is intrinsic to the act of faith. Mary, the first Christian, gives clear witness to this fundamental lesson of our baptismal life in Christ Jesus.

2. God Does Not Reveal the Details to Mary

How much does Mary know at the time of the annunciation? Does she know that the child to be born of her is the second person of the trinity? Our Lady thinks in the thought-patterns of her age, of her people; it is rather difficult to imagine that the trinitarian formulation of later ages was known by her.

What, then, did she know? Pope Paul VI speaks of Mary’s “active and responsible consent.” She had, therefore, enough knowledge to make a valid, human act of total faith in the will of God. What precisely that entails is impossible to detail. To say that Our Lady knew from Isaiah 7:14 that the divine Savior would be born of a virgin is not only to read into the text but also to ignore the fact that Isaiah’s announcement of a young girl who would conceive and give birth to a son was not understood by the Jews as referring to a virginal conception of the Messiah.

God Does Not Reveal the Details, Yet Asks For a Total Surrender

Her fiat can well be compared to the matrimonial consent of a bride and groom at their wedding, or to a religious at first profession. They know enough, it is presumed, to enter into a valid marriage or religious profession. Yet it is evident that they do not know the details. However, in that initial Yes is included everything which springs from it: the joys, the sorrows, the difficulties, the agonies and the ecstasies. That Yes is an acceptance of them all even though they are not explicitly known. So too with Mary.

At the annunciation, God does not reveal to her the details, yet asks for a total surrender. She cannot, when she stands at the foot of the Cross, cry out to God that she never said Yes to such sorrow. For, although not explicitly known by her, it was included in her annunciation fiat. The beginning is not just the first of a series; it “contains” everything which flows from it. The annunciation is the beginning of Mary’s life as Mother of the Lord; her Yes comprises everything which may emanate from it.

The details of our baptismal life in Christ, the details or our Yes to a specific vocation are only known as they unfold. Yet God calls us to be faithful even when those details shock and surprise us.

3. Mary’s Yes is Total

Mary’s “let it be to me” is in the optative mood in the original Greek. Luke is telling us that Our Lady – in spite of the difficulties involved – freely, lovingly and totally surrenders to God’s inscrutable will. The Mother of the Savior does not pout and say to God; “Well, go ahead, get this thing over with and have your way”!  Rather, the brave woman, she lovingly opts for God’s plans even though they do not mesh with the way she visualized her life. Her surrender is total, loving, active and responsible. Mary of the annunciation finds herself only by losing herself in God’s mysterious ways. She is free precisely because she is the loving “slave-girl” of the Lord.

Mary is the model of faith. Even though our plans are torn up, even though details are not disclosed, our surrender to the Lord must be total and loving. The pilgrimage of faith has as its goal the complete union of our will to that of God. Like Mary, we are called to be one heart with the heart of God. Our baptismal life is a living out of our own “Let it be to me according to your word.”

(To Be Continued)