From the responsorial psalm: ““In the written scroll it is prescribed for me, To do your will, O my God, is my delight, and your law is within my heart!” Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 1:26-38, today’s readings)
“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. 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.”
In the moments after God sent the angel Gabriel to Mary, the salvation of all humanity hangs on Mary’s response. She asks how the Incarnation will take place, how God with us will come to be. Gabriel explains that “the power of the Most High will overshadow” and that his kingdom will have no end and that Elizabeth also will bear a child. Mary’s fiat echoes through the whole of salvation history. As Isaiah prophesied, Emmanuel takes the form of flesh, as Mary says yes to God’s will. No longer will the blood of bulls and goats be offered to take away sins but only the “offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all” through his obedience to the Father’s will. What takes place during the Annunciation is hard to grasp, but in pondering what it means, what it means for us today that Mary said yes, we offer to God a sacrifice of praise.
God, help me see Mary’s deep humility as she calls herself the handmaid of the Lord. I have a day ahead of me to offer an ear attentive to your will and a spirit to discern what you are asking me to do and how to do it. Give me the grace to recognize what you call me to—great or small—and strengthen my desire to hear you speak to me. “Here I am, Lord,” the psalmist sings, “I come to do your will.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.