(Audio)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,
as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
to be holy and without blemish before him.
We see this promise first realized in Mary. Before we are filled with every spiritual blessing in the heavens she is filled with grace. God wants us all to be holy and without blemish before him. But it is in Mary that this promise first comes to fruition. It is not so hard to imagine why, if he desires these things for all of us, if we in fact need them to truly live our adoption as sons and daughters, if we cannot enter into glory without them, that Mary would receive these things first. We see that the fullness of grace she received allowed her to accept the "intention of his will", saying, "May it be done unto me according to thy word." We see that she exists for the praise of his glory, she whose soul magnifies the LORD and whose spirit glories in God her savior.
Do not be afraid, Mary,
for you have found favor with God.
Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,
and you shall name him Jesus.
Eve was given the choice to obey God but decided to disobey.
“Why did you do such a thing?”
The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”
After Eve, all other examples we were given were similar flawed and half-hearted in responding to God. In Mary, Eve's disobedience is finally reversed. Mary is allowed and chooses to be the perfect example of receiving the grace of Jesus. She is an the example we are given of what an unhindered and complete response to God's offer to us can look like. Mary is not given this grace for herself alone, but so that we can all exist "for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved."
Ultimately it is insufficient to simply chip away at the problem of sin and disobedience. We need the complete reversal that God wrought by his power in Mary, through the merits of her Son's death and resurrection. Without his merits Mary could not be what she is. Without Mary's example, understanding how to give our own assent to Jesus would never be as clear as it is when we hear her fiat.
Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word."
Then the angel departed from her.
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