The Annunciation and Fiat: Mary’s Specific Call

With the mystery of the Annunciation, we are in fact presented with the first act of explicit Christian faith. Elizabeth tells us in the mystery of the Visitation that Mary’s blessedness in this mystery is purely and primarily a blessedness of faith. She is blessed because she believed. Our Lord Himself tells us this in the Gospel: when someone says to Him: “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that fed you!” Jesus replies: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

In his treatise on virginity, St. Augustine states the following concerning these words of Christ: “Mary is more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ, than in conceiving the flesh of Christ. Her nearness as a Mother would have been of no profit to Mary, had she not borne Christ in her heart after a more blessed manner than in her flesh.”

This act of faith of the Most Holy Virgin must not only lead us into the full mystery of her divine motherhood, which begins with this act of faith, but must also help us understand in an immediately practical way what our Christian faith should be and how we must behave as believers receiving God’s Word.

Through her fiat to the angel’s words, Mary’s spirit, in its deepest, most vital and intimate core, fully adheres to the words of God’s messenger as God’s Words for her. In this living and loving act of faith, Mary’s spirit touches the Word of God Himself in His personal mystery; or, more accurately, the Word of God acts upon her spirit, which totally surrenders to this divine hold over it. The Word of God imprints Himself on her spirit from the inside, so to speak, so that Mary’s spirit is as though possessed by the Person of the Word. “Christ dwells in our hearts through faith.” The Word of God Himself dwells in her spirit and possesses it.

In Mary’s fiat, her act of faith, her spirit acquires a new certainty, which enables her to stand firm, as though her spirit were able to see face to face Him who is given to her in an invisible way and in darkness, but who is more intimately present than ever.