The
question may strike you as irreverent. How dare I suggest that the Blessed
Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, Tower of David, and all the other titles, could
have left us in the lurch like that?
But what
if she had?
Could she
have said No? You might say that of course she couldn’t, she was far too holy —
but you would be guilty of demeaning and dangerous sentimentality. It is
demeaning because it turns Our Lady from a free human being into a sanctified
automaton. The whole glory of the Annunciation is that Mary, the second Eve,
could have said No to God but she said Yes instead. That is what we celebrate,
that is what we praise her for; and rightly so.
This
sentimental view is dangerous too. If we believe that the most important
decision in the history of the world was in fact inevitable, that it couldn’t
have been otherwise, then that means it was effortless. Now we have a
marvellous excuse for laziness. Next time we’re faced with a tough moral
decision, we needn’t worry about doing what is right. Just drift, and God will
make sure that whatever choice we make is the right one. If God really wants us
to do something he’ll sweep us off our feet the way he did Mary, and if he chooses
not to, it’s hardly our fault, is it?
So Mary
could have said No to Gabriel. What if she had? He couldn’t just go and ask
someone else, like some sort of charity collector. With all the genealogies and
prophecies in the Bible, there was only one candidate. It’s an alarming
thought. Ultimately, of course, God would have done something: the history of
salvation is the history of him never abandoning his people however pig-headed
they were. But God has chosen to work through human history. If the first
attempt at redemption took four thousand years to prepare, from the Fall to the
Annunciation, how many tens of thousands of years would the next attempt have
taken?
Even if
the world sometimes makes us feel like cogs in a machine, each of us is unique
and each of us is here for a purpose: just because it isn’t as spectacular a
purpose as Mary’s, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. When we fail to seek
our vocation, or put off fulfilling some part of it, we try to justify
ourselves by saying that someone else will do it better, that God will provide,
that it doesn’t really matter. But we are lying. However small a part I have to
play, the story of the Annunciation tells me it is my part and no-one else can
do it.
Faced
with the enormity of her choice, how was Mary able to decide? If she said No,
unredeemed generations would toil on under the burden of sin. If she said Yes,
she herself would suffer, and so would her Son; but both would be glorified.
Millions of people not yet born would have Heaven open to them; but millions of
others would suffer oppression and death in her son’s name. The stakes were
almost infinite.
You might
say that Mary didn’t worry about all this, just obeyed God; but I don’t believe
it. What God wanted was not Mary’s unthinking obedience but her full and
informed consent as the representative of the entire human race. The two
greatest miracles of the Annunciation are these: that God gave Mary the wisdom
to know the consequences of her decision, and that he gave her the grace not to
be overwhelmed by that knowledge.
When we
come to an important decision in our lives, we can easily find our minds
clouded by the possible consequences, or, even more, by partial knowledge of
them. How can we ever move, when there is so much good and evil whichever way
we go? The Annunciation gives us the answer. God’s grace will give us the
strength to move, even if the fate of the whole world is hanging in the
balance. After all, God does not demand that our decisions should be the
correct ones (assuming that there even is such a thing), only that they should
be rightly made.
There is
one more truth that the Annunciation teaches us, and it is so appalling that I
can think of nothing uplifting to say about it that will take the sting away:
perhaps it is best forgotten, because it tells us more about God than we are
able to understand. The Almighty Father creates heaven and earth, the sun and
all the stars; but when he really wants something done, he comes, the
Omnipotent and Omniscient, to one of his poor, weak creatures — and he asks.
And, day
by day, he keeps on asking us.
By Fr. Gregory Jensen
Source: http://palamas.info/what-if-she-had-said-no/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed
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