As Mother of Mercy, Mary bends over her children in Ukraine

This is the text of the homily delivered by Archbishop J. Michael Miller at Holy Rosary Cathedral for the Solemnity of the Annunciation. The Mass can be viewed here. 

Annunciation of the Lord
Holy Rosary Cathedral
25 March 2022

Dear brother priests and deacons, and brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus our Lord:       

In today’s Gospel, Mary shines forth as the first and greatest of Jesus’ disciples. She follows in Jesus’ footsteps. This doesn’t entail imitating him in the externals of his life by wearing sandals or learning Aramaic but by doing the Father’s will.

This is the key to Mary’s discipleship. Her faith in God. Her obedience to God’s will is splendidly summed up in the dialogue in the alcove at Nazareth. Through the Angel Gabriel, the Lord God asks her if she would bring into the world “the Son of the Most High” (Lk 1:32).

The young Virgin is puzzled, of course: what teenage girl or woman would not be? And so she asks “How?”

But once she hears that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of the Most High will overshadow her (cf. Lk 1:35), her answer is swift and unreserved: “Be it done unto me according to your word” – fiat (Lk 1:38).

In these few simple words, the most decisive act of faith in history took place. An ancient writer said that it’s as if Mary were saying to God, “Look at me, I am a tablet to be written on: let the Writer write whatever he wills; let the Lord do with me as he wishes.”  Nowadays, we might say that Mary offered herself to God as a clean page on which he could write whatever he wanted.

In an Angelus address a couple years ago, Pope Francis commented on the deeper meaning of Mary’s “yes” or fiat.

The expression indicates a strong desire, it indicates the will that something happen. In other words, Mary does not say: “If it has to happen, let it happen..., if it cannot be otherwise ....” It is not resignation. No, she does not express a weak and submissive acceptance, but rather she expresses a strong desire, a vivacious desire. She is not passive, but active. She does not submit to God, she binds herself to God. She is a woman in love prepared to serve her Lord completely and immediately.

A Rosary of “Fiats”

On that day of the Annunciation, Mary didn’t get a script about all that was to happen to her and her Son; no scenario for her life as a mother. The only assurance she received about her future was God had spoken. For her, that was enough.

At this moment, Mary surely didn’t know where her “yes” would take her, “by what road she must venture, what pains she must suffer, what risks she must face. But she is aware that it is the Lord asking and she entrusts herself totally to him.”  The Angel told her nothing of her Son’s birth in a stable, of the family fleeing as refugees into foreign Egypt, of the obscure years in Nazareth or of the separation from her Son during his public ministry.

All along the way, Mary humbly said her “yes” to God: a “yes” which threw her simple life in Nazareth into turmoil, and not only once. Any number of times she had to utter a heartfelt “yes” at moments of joy and sorrow. All this culminated in the “yes” she spoke at the foot of the Cross. Think of the full extent of Mary’s faithfulness to God: seeing her only Son hanging on the Cross, utterly heartbroken, yet faithful and strong. As a widowed mother she lived once again what she had said many years before as a young virgin: “fiat” – let it be done unto me according to your word.”

Mary never took back her initial, radical “yes.” “Whatever you want, O Lord, whatever your will is, that is my delight.”

Our “Yes” to God’s Will

Today Mary is likewise inviting each of us to say “yes” to whatever the Lord asks of us, difficult as being faithful to him might be. “Thy will be done” we repeat daily. We ask the good Lord to enable us to make our own daily fiat.

Remember, however, that doing God’s will isn’t an intolerable or impossible burden, even though it might be demanding.

I would also like to emphasize the word by which Mary defines herself in her surrender to God: she professes herself to be “the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk 1:38). Right from the outset, Mary’s “yes” to God “assumes the attitude of service, of attention to the needs of others. This is testified to concretely by the fact of her visit to Elizabeth, which immediately follows the Annunciation.”   Her openness to God, like ours, is verified in the openness to taking on the needs of others.

With us today in her Cathedral is the Blessed Virgin Mary. She stood on the hill of Golgotha as the Mother of her dying Son, as his most perfect Disciple, as the new Eve standing beneath the tree of life, as the Companion of the “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Is 53:3), Our Sister, the Queen of Peace.

As the Mother of Mercy, Mary bends over her children in Ukraine experiencing the violence and terror of war, who face dangers and exhaustion. She sees their sufferings. She hears the cry arising from their afflictions, and she brings them comfort and the hope of peace. 

If we want the world to change, if we truly want peace, our heart first must change. To do this, today let us allow ourselves to be taken by the hand of Mary. Let us look at her Immaculate Heart, where God himself rested. We now knock on that Heart. In union with the Bishops and the faithful of the world, we solemnly wish to bring to the Immaculate Heart of Mary all that we are experiencing: to renew to her the consecration of the Church and of all humanity and to consecrate to her, in a particular way, the Ukrainian and Russian people, who venerate her as Mother.   Therefore, we will now turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary and entrust these peoples and nations to her maternal intercession as the Queen of Peace.

† J. Michael Miller, CSB
Archbishop of Vancouver