Friends, today’s Gospel declares the significance of Mary’s fiat. When Mary says, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word,” she exhibits such faith and thereby undoes the refusal of Eve. And this fiat to the impossible made possible the Incarnation of God. In accepting the seduction of the alluring Mystery, she allowed God’s love to become enfleshed for the transformation of the world.
In the Catholic faith, Mary is praised as the Mother of the Church, the matrix of all discipleship. What this means is that her fiat is the ground and model of every disciple’s response to God’s desire for incarnation. Meister Eckhart said that all believers become “mothers of Christ,” bearers of the incarnate Word, in the measure that they acquiesce to the divine passion to push concretely into creation.