**"Behold, I come to do your will."**
The Most Holy Trinity had traced a plan for Our Lady, a unique and absolutely exceptional destiny: to be the Mother of the Incarnate God. Yet, God asks Mary for her free acceptance. She did not doubt the angel’s words, as Zechariah had done; however, she expresses the incompatibility between her decision to live in perpetual virginity—which God Himself had placed in her heart—and the conception of a child. It is then that the angel announces to her, in clear and sublime terms, that she was to be a mother without losing her virginity: *The Holy Spirit will come 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 intellect or her heart: everything is open to the divine will, without any restriction or limitation. This abandonment to God is what makes Mary’s soul the "good soil" capable of receiving the divine seed. *Ecce ancilla Domini…* behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word. Our Lady accepts with immense joy having no other will or 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 setting conditions, joyfully and freely.
> "Thus Mary, daughter of Adam, by consenting to the divine message, became the Mother of Jesus and, embracing God’s salvific will with a full heart and impeded by no sin, she devoted herself totally as a handmaid of the Lord to the person and work of her Son, under Him and with Him, by the grace of almighty God, serving the mystery of redemption. Rightly therefore do the holy Fathers see her as used by God not merely in a passive way, but as freely cooperating in the work of human salvation through faith and obedience."
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### Understanding Our Own Call
The vocation of Holy Mary is the perfect example of every vocation. We understand our own lives and the events surrounding them in the light of our own calling. It is in the effort to carry out that divine design where we find the path to Heaven and our own human and supernatural fulfillment.
Vocation is not so much the choice we make, but rather the choice God has made of us through a thousand circumstances that must be interpreted with faith and a clean, upright heart. *You did not choose me, but I chose you.* "Every vocation, every existence, is in itself a grace that contains many others within it. A grace—that is, a gift, something given to us, presented to us without any right on our part, without any personal merit that motivates or, much less, justifies it. It is not necessary for the vocation, the call to fulfill God’s design, or the assigned mission to be grand or brilliant: it is enough that God has wanted to use us, to make use of us; the mere fact that He trusts in our collaboration is enough. This is already, in itself, so unheard of, so magnificent, that an entire life dedicated to gratitude would not suffice to reciprocate."
Today, it will be very pleasing to God if we thank Him for the countless lights that have marked the itinerary of our calling, and that we do so through His Most Holy Mother, who so faithfully responded to what the Lord desired of her.