I am a diocesan priest in the parish of Cyrill and Method in the Archdiocese of Vienna, and a teacher at the "Behold, I come to do your will, o God." Beginning with the narrative of man’s fall, the whole Bibel tells of the consequences of man’s rejection of God: suffering, death, social and political division, war, and it tells the Gospel, the good news of God’s plan to transform that rejection into acceptance.
This “Yes” has a central place in today’s feast, the Annunciation. Nine months before Christmas, the Lord’s birth, this feast recalls: God himself becomes man, affirms the humanity that he created, and enables man to say a wholehearted, sincere “yes” to God, and to himself, despite destructive, sinful and egoistic tendencies present in him after the fall.
Mary lived from the very beginning in a deep relationship to her child and Lord, a relationship oriented towards her maternity, but rooted in the first place in her faith. In faith she spoke her “Yes”, gave her assent to the Lord’s word to her, revealed through the angel Gabriel. Through this obedience of faith the wonder took place, which we venerate in adoration: God became man, Immanuel, God with us.
As Eve’s and Adam’s disobedience stands at the beginning of humanity’s disobedience, so Mary expresses this obedience of faith, as the new “Eve”, for humanity and for the whole Church, which believes in God, hopes in him, and loves him. We are called with her to renew our assent to God and to his plan for us.
That means for me and each of us: to affirm and to do what I can to achieve my goals and to improve my part of the world in some way. But it also means to accept the world as it is, in a state of imperfection and on a journey, which its uncertainty, its tensions. And it means above all, to trust that God accompanies, calls, and fills us with his grace, that all things lead to good for those who love Him.