“Beware of Co-Opting the Meaning of Mary’s Yes”

This essay was published today — the Solemnity of the Annunciation — on CatholicArtistConnection.com as part of their Lenten series of reflections.

It happened many times during my years as an active parishioner.  A request cloaked as an invitation to serve on one more committee, take on one more task, fill in for one more person who had stopped doing whatever they had been invited to do.  A request that was just shy of an order, because volunteers can’t be ordered around, can they?

It wasn’t the request, invitation or order that was troublesome, even though in those days I needed help defending my own boundaries.  No, it was the rationale offered at the merest hint of hesitation on my part: “Mary said Yes!”

Oh, well, then.

I would swallow the impulse to point out that no angel was appearing before me at that moment, just a harried human being who was looking to me to solve a staffing problem.  And so, I would often say Yes.

Unlike mine at those times, Mary’s Yes came from deep within her being, her heart-soul-mind-body, her very self.  She had been created and prepared just for this moment, loved into existence by God to fulfill not just her own destiny, but all of ours, by her assent.  Without her Yes, where would any of us be?  

As a created creature, Mary possessed free will and could have demurred.  But doing so would not have been an authentic response; it would have gone counter to her nature.  Knowing herself, and trusting God, she opened herself fully to grace and became Theotokos.

In ways unique to us, but always inspired by the grace lavished upon us, we are called to manifest God.  May we follow Mary’s example.  May we be true to our own natures and, knowing ourselves and trusting God, live out the meaning of her Yes.