Dec 8: Let It Be with Me According to Your Word

Diego Velasquez: The Immaculate Conception

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Gospel: Lk 1:26-38

Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word (NRSV, Lk: 38a).’

Lord God, your evangelist Luke tells us that when Mary heard the angel speaking to her, she was at first confused. “How can this be?” It is the same response that comes from so many of your servants when finally they hear your Word speaking to them at the depth of their being. Isaiah said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Jeremiah said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."

Mary, like others among us, thought that everything in her life was going well. In her case, she was engaged to be married. She looked forward to a life as wife and mother, a life not very different, she hoped, from the lives of many other young women that she knew. And then, of a sudden, all of that was shattered as she came to understand the future to which you, Father, were calling her and what her response had to be.

Mary was at first puzzled, even confused, but, in faith, Lord, she responded: “Let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary’s destiny was to be the mother of Jesus, your only begotten Son. Each of us has our own destiny as sharers, Lord, in your divine life. We are all called to fulfill that destiny at every moment of our lives, even from the womb. Mary, too, was called not just once, but over and over, throughout her earthly life and beyond, as she says, “Yes,” each time to your divine summons.

For all of us, at every moment, your call, Lord, bursts in upon our lives and shatters them, not once, but over and over again, however we may respond, every time summoning us forward to a future that we, like Mary, could not have conceived even an instant before.

Help us, Lord, to follow the example of your holy servants, especially Mary, Theotokos, the mother of your Son Jesus, that we too may say, “Yes,” at each moment, as, bursting into our lives to shatter them, you call us ever forward to grow in your divine life.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.