Do not be afraid, Mary,
for you have found favor with God.
Mary found favor with God. Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit called her the most blessed among women (see Luke 1:41-42). But she was not blessed simply for her own sake. And indeed the blessing at first appeared to be more of a challenge and a cross to bear compared to the normal blessings given to those less blessed than she. Many women were made able to bear children who were then able to live their lives and watch their children thrive. From the beginning Mary was forced to share in the hatred heaped up by the world upon her child, from the time she was forced to flee with Joseph to Egypt to when she kept her station beneath the cross. With blessings like these, we might think, who needs curses? If her blessedness was meant to be something for her to enjoy alone it need not have been this way. But then too it could never have amounted to much. It was because her blessedness was for the sake of the world that it could not be shallow. Like Israel, she was blessed, but her blessing was for the sake of the entire world. This meant that it could not be a story that merely ignored death until it could be put off no longer. It was rather a story, the only story, that would turn death inside out. Because of this there was no other way besides the way her son chose, the way of the cross.
He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father,
and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever,
and of his kingdom there will be no end.
The blessedness of Mary did not consist chiefly in the honor that was her due as the mother of the king. That honor would have been a shallow thing indeed if she was a mere figurehead or decoration. Her blessedness consisted chiefly in the fact that by responding to the angel in faith, her love opened the way to the redemption of the world. To give such a yes was to tell God that no matter what he wanted to do through her, no matter how he chose to work through her, she wanted it, and assented to it, even if it be a cross. Only because she lived in the freedom of one not tainted by original sin could she even truly mean her words when she said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word". The honor that is her due as the Queen of heaven is thus not merely about position, but about the love we received and indeed continue to receive through her. We can be confident from her yes to God that she will always be a faithful advocate for us before the throne of her son. Before that throne the chief thing that she desires for us is that we learn to say yes with less and less reservation until we can say it, as she did, with our whole being.
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