II — HANDMAID OF THE LORD

Presence of God. — O Mary, you who declared yourself the handmaid of the Lord, teach me to place my whole life and my strength at his service.

Meditation

1 — All the splendid effects - of divine filiation, of participation in divine life, of intimate relations with the Trinity - that grace produces in our souls, we see realized in Mary with a prominence, a force, and a realism altogether singular. If, for example, every soul in grace is God’s adopted daughter and temple of the Holy Spirit, Our Lady is so par excellence and in the fullest way, since to her the Trinity communicated itself in the highest degree allowed to the state of a mere creature, so that - as St. Thomas teaches - Mary’s dignity reaches “the threshold of the infinite” (I-II q. 103, a. 4, ad 2). This is well understood when one thinks that, from all eternity, Mary was chosen by God as Mother of his Son. As the Incarnation of the Word was the first work in God’s mind, in view of which all was created, so also Mary, who was to have so great a part in this work, was foreseen and chosen by God before all creatures. To her, therefore, quite rightly are applied the words of Sacred Scripture: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his works, before He made anything, from the beginning” (Prov. 8, 22). And when Adam, deprived of the state of grace, was driven out of the earthly paradise, one ray of hope alone illumined the darkness of deluded humanity: “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” the Lord said to the serpent, “she shall crush your head” (Gen. 3, 15). Behold Mary appearing on the horizon as God’s beloved daughter, who never, not even for an instant, was slave of the devil, but who was always the untouched daughter, immaculate, wholly God’s. Daughter whom the Most High could always regard with supreme complacency and whom He willed to introduce into the circle of his divine family through the bonds of the closest intimacy with the three divine Persons: daughter of the Father, mother of the Incarnate Word, spouse of the Holy Spirit.

2 — Mary lived her divine filiation with a profound sense of humble dependence and loving adhesion to all God’s wills; we have its most beautiful expression in her response to the Angel’s message: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk. 1, 38). Mary is aware of her position as creature before the Creator and, although He raised her to so high a dignity that, “after that of God, it is the greatest that can be thought” (Pius XI), she, to express her relations toward the Lord, finds nothing better than to declare herself his handmaid. This word expresses the Virgin’s interior attitude toward God, and it is not a transitory attitude but permanent, habitual throughout her life, similar to that of Jesus who, coming into the world, said: “Behold, I come to do your will, O God” (Heb. 10, 7). Thus Mary, who had to be Christ’s most faithful image, offers herself to the heavenly Father’s will saying: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” And, faithful to her offering, she will accept unconditionally not only any manifest will of God, but also every circumstance permitted by Him: she will accept the long, difficult journey that will carry her far from her home precisely in the days when she had to give birth to the Son of God; she will accept the humble and poor shelter of a stable, the nocturnal flight into Egypt, the hardships and discomforts of exile, the labor and fatigue of a poor life, separation from the Son who departs from her to give himself to the apostolate, persecutions and insults directed at her Jesus and so painful to her maternal heart; she will finally accept the opprobriums of the Passion and Calvary, the death of her beloved Son. And we can well think that in every circumstance her interior dispositions were those of the day of the Annunciation: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” What an example for us of humble dependence on God, of absolute fidelity to his will, and of perseverance in vocation despite difficulties and sacrifices we may encounter on our way.

Colloquy

O Mary, all pure and all holy, full of God, his beloved daughter, chosen by Him from all eternity as mother of his Only-begotten, preserved by Him from every shadow of sin, enriched by Him with every grace, O Mary, how great you are, how beautiful you are! “All fair you are, O Mary, and stain of sin is not in you. You are the glory of Jerusalem, you the joy of Israel, you the honor of our people” (From the Liturgy).

The Most High has always looked on you with complacency and willed to give himself to you in a singular way. “The Lord is with you, O Mary! With you is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, God Three and One. God the Father, of whom you are the most noble daughter; God the Son, of whom you are the most worthy mother; God the Holy Spirit, of whom you are the most beautiful spouse. You are truly the daughter of supreme Eternity, the mother of supreme Truth, the spouse of supreme Goodness, the handmaid of the supreme Trinity” (cf. Conrad of Saxony). But of all these titles You choose the last, the most humble, the lowest, and declare yourself the handmaid of the Lord.

“O how sublime is your humility, which yields not to the seductions of glory and in glory knows no pride. You are chosen to be Mother of God and you call yourself handmaid! O Lady, how could you unite in your heart so humble a concept of yourself with such purity, with such innocence, and above all with so great a fullness of grace? O blessed one, from where comes to you such humility? Truly through this virtue you merited to be looked upon by God with singular love; you merited to enamor the King by your beauty, to draw the eternal Son from the Father’s bosom” (cf. St. Bernard).

O Mary, you proclaimed yourself the handmaid of the Lord, and you truly lived as such, always humbly subject to his wills, always ready for his signs, his invitations. And who more than you can say with Jesus: “My food is to do the will of my Father”? (cf. Jn. 4, 34). O Mary, sweetest daughter of the heavenly Father, impress in my heart a little of your docility, a little of your love for God’s holy will, that I may serve Him less unworthily.