Today we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation, the angel
announces to Mary that she has been chosen by God to be the mother of the Son
of God, sent into the world, not to
condemn it but to save it. Her womb will be opened by the Holy Spirit and will
receive the Son of God, who will take on our humanity. Mary, hearing of God’s plan, says: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. May it be
done to me according to your word.” What
do you and I say when “an angel of the Lord” announces God’s plan for us? Are
we willing, as Mary was, to have it done to us according to God’s word, or,
like Adam and Eve, do we follow our own will and set God’s aside?
Only by God’s intervention would humankind be saved from
eternal darkness, from separation from God that was caused by our disobedience.
Jesus’ obedience and Mary’s’ would
change that for us. Paul says to us in
Hebrews 10: 1-10, the second reading of today’s Mass, “It is impossible that
the blood of bulls and goats takes away sins. For this reason, when Christ came
into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body
you prepared for me” in Mary’s womb. “[I]n holocaust and sin offerings you took
no delight. Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, behold, I come to
do your will, O God.” Paul
continues: “By this ‘will,’ we have been
consecrated [made holy, made whole, sanctified] through the offering of the
Body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Nothing you and I do makes us right with God. Only Jesus can do that and
He did by being obedient to the Father
unto death.
How obedient am I to God? Whose will am I following? God’s?
or my own? Do I want to know? If so, I need to sit
at the feet of Jesus in solitude and let the Spirit open my mind to the will of
God for me.
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