The Most Holy Trinity had drawn up a plan for Our Lady, a unique and absolutely exceptional destiny: to be the Mother of the Incarnate God. But God asked Mary for her free acceptance. She did not doubt the words of the angel, as Zechariah had done; she manifested, however, the incompatibility between her decision to always live her virginity, which God himself had placed in her heart, and the conception of a son. It is then that the angel announces to her in clear and sublime terms that she was to become a mother without losing her virginity: The Holy Spirit will descend upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God.
Mary listens and ponders these words in her heart. There is no resistance in her mind and heart: everything is open to the divine will, without restriction or limitation. This abandonment to God is what makes Mary's soul good soil capable of receiving the divine seed8. Ecce ancilla Domini... behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word. Our Lady accepts with immense joy to have no other will and no other desire than that of her Master and Lord, who from that moment is also her Son, made man in her most pure womb. She gives herself without limitation, without conditions, joyfully and freely. "Thus Mary, daughter of Adam, in accepting the divine message, became the Mother of Jesus and, embracing wholeheartedly and without hindrance of sin the will of God, she consecrated herself totally as handmaid of the Lord to the Person and work of her Son, serving diligently the mystery of redemption with Him and under Him, with the grace of almighty God. Rightly, then, do the Holy Fathers think that Mary was not a purely passive instrument in the hands of God, but that she cooperated in the salvation of men with free faith and obedience."
The vocation of St. Mary is the perfect example of every vocation. We understand our life and the events that surround it in the light of our own call. It is in the effort to carry out this divine plan that we find the path to Heaven and our own human and supernatural fulfillment.
Vocation is not so much the choice that we make, as the one that God has made for us through a thousand circumstances that we must know how to interpret with faith and with a clean and upright heart. You did not choose Me, but I chose you. "Every vocation, every existence, is in itself a grace that contains many others. A grace, that is, a gift, something that is given to us, that is given to us without any right on our part, without any merit of our own to motivate or, even less, to justify it. It is not necessary that the vocation, the call to fulfill God's plan, the assigned mission, be great or brilliant: it is enough that God wanted to use us, to make use of us, it is enough that he trusts in our collaboration. This in itself is already so unprecedented, so great, that a whole life dedicated to gratitude would not be enough to reciprocate".
Today it will be very pleasing to God that we thank him for the countless lights that have been pointing out the itinerary of our call, and that we do it through his Blessed Mother who so faithfully corresponded to what the Lord wanted of her.