Mary's 'Fiat' and our will
"Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum" (Be it done to me according to your word). These are the famous words of Our Lady that radically changed the course of the history of mankind.
With them, God's work of human redemption started to take place in its final form. Our time recovered its fullness when it is reunited with the divine eternity. Our state of being a fugitive from God due to our sin is given a reprieve and a way to reconcile with God.
And that's because, with these words, the Son of God became man. "Et verbum caro factum est" (And the Word was made flesh). In the very womb of Mary, the reconnection between God and man, sundered by sin, was established.
In a very mysterious way, a woman, a creature became the mother of her creator and savior, and thus enjoyed a number of divine favors and privileges, among them, those of her immaculate conception, perpetual virginity and assumption into heaven, without compromising her humanity and her freedom.
Mary becomes the icon of the most ideal state of man as he is meant to be, in the mind of God, at the beginning of creation, before sin came, as well as at the end of time, when everything would be reconciled with God our Father through the cross of his Son and her Son.
She is the most perfect among all the creatures. Greater than her, no one else except God, as one saint would put it. She is the perfect personification of what is meant to be "the image and likeness of God" in which man was designed and created.
She is also the perfect personification of man redeemed by Christ after we have all fallen into sin. Being the perfect co-redeemer in Christ, she embodies the best results of the redemptive work of her Son, thus she deserved the assumption into heaven body and soul without waiting for the end of time.
All these mainly because of that word, "Fiat" (Be it done). Her openness to God's will, her obedience to the divine designs for man somehow started the healing of the disobedience of our first parents that plunged all of us into a life and a world of sin.
That "Fiat" is the best example of obedience that man as a creature can have in relation to the will of God, our Creator and Father. It perfectly echoes in a mysteriously anticipative way also Christ's obedience to the will of his Father - "If it is your will, let this cup pass by me, but not my will but yours be done."
Mary's "Fiat" is the perfect model of how our will ought to be conformed to God's will. We have to be reminded that by the very nature of our will, the very seat of our freedom, our will is supposed to be in synch with the will of its Creator. It just cannot be by itself, turning and moving purely by its own.
It is meant to be engaged with the will of God, its creator and lawgiver. It is the very power we have been given by God that enables us to unite ourselves with God in the most intimate way. All the other aspects of our life - physical, biological, chemical, etc. - are also governed by God-given laws but, by themselves, they cannot bring us into intimate union with God.
We cannot expropriate our will to be simply our own. We are meant only to be stewards of it, not its owner nor its designer, creator and lawgiver. It has to submit itself to the will of God, otherwise it would be working without proper foundation and purpose.
Mary's "Fiat" should be an all-time motto for us, a guiding principle in our whole life. The submission of our will to God's will is never a diminution of our freedom. On the contrary, it is the enhancement of our freedom. It is where we can have our true freedom and true joy.
We need to be more aware of this fundamental need of ours to conform our will to the will of God. Very often, we behave like spoiled brats who do not yet realize the importance of this need. We have to correct this tendency.
We have to train ourselves in the art of deepening our sense of obedience to God's will, basing it on our faith, hope and love of God and others, and making it intelligent, truly voluntary, prompt and cheerful.
That's when we can be truly children of God, his image and likeness.
- Latest
