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Suddenly, out of nowhere, while Mary was busy about her chores, an angel spoke to her and gave her a fantastic, incredible message that she would be the mother of God, the long-awaited messiah.
She accepted this role with simple words, saying that she was ready to do God’s will. We call it her fiat, which simply means “yes.” But that was only one fiat of the thousand she must have had to say.
The next fiat was to be silent under Joseph’s bewilderment. And after that, when she gave miraculous birth to her Child, what must have been her thoughts?
Later, she resumed the most humdrum life possible, for nothing special happened. This boy who was the messiah was just a boy like any other boy.
He ate. He slept. Then he grew, helped Joseph around the carpentry shop, learned the trade, and perhaps only once “stepped out of line,” at the age of twelve, when he disappeared without his parents’ knowing where, in Jerusalem (Lk 2:41-50).
Serenely, silently, she accepted all this. But she must have been wondering what it was all about, even as some of us today are wondering what our life is all about.
We wonder without her serenity, without her peace, without her love, and without her faith! How we need her love, her faith, her silence, her endlessly repeated fiat!
She was no ordinary woman, though she might have appeared to be one to the gaze of her neighbors. What courage it took to live that way! What immense faith!
Then, without warning probably, her Son left her, dropped everything and went preaching across Palestine. She may have followed. She may also have heard rumors, not all of them complimentary to him. So many accused him of so much.
This must not have been her idea of a messiah. Or was it?
From Bogoroditza, (2001), p. 70, available from MH Publications
