Live 4 The LORD

Mary, who was to be the most faithful likeness of Jesus, offered herself to the will of her heavenly Father when she said: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1: 38). Faithful to her word, she would accept without reserve not only every manifest will of God, but also every circumstance permitted by him: the long, inconvenient journey which would bring her far from home, just when she was about to bring into the world the Son of God; the poor, humble shelter of a stable; the flight into Egypt by night, the privations and inconveniences of exile, the labor and weariness of a life of poverty, the separation from her Son when he would leave her to begin his apostolate, the persecutions and insults he would endure and of which her maternal heart would be well aware, and finally, the disgrace of the passion and death of her beloved Son on Calvary. We have good reason to believe that in each of these events, her interior dispositions were the same as on the day of the Annunciation: “I am 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 our vocation, in spite of the difficulties and sacrifices we shall have to encounter.