Visitation 2010

"The Truth About Mary"

"Blessed is she who believed" (RMa #13): This comprises two points for our emulation:


1) Mary said "Yes!"

"Mary entrusted herself to God completely... She responded... with all her human and feminine 'I'"
Mary's "Yes!" is the contradiction to Eve's "No!" Eve was seduced into a suspicion about God
who asked man and woman not to eat the fruit of that particular tree in Paradise. Satan did not deny God or His existence. Ratzinger describes the temptation: "It starts out... with an apparently reasonable request for information, which in reality, however, contains an insinuation that provokes the human being and that lures him or her from trust to mistrust: 'Did God say, "You shall not eat of any tree of the garden"?' (Genesis 3, 1). The first thing is not the denial of God but rather doubt about his covenant, about the community of faith, prayer, the commandments - all of which are the context for living God's covenant.... It is so easy to convince people that this covenant is not a gift but rather an expression of envy of human kind and that it is robbing human beings of their freedom and of the most precious things of life. With this doubt people are well on their way to building their own worlds" (J. Ratzinger, "In the Beginning..." ).

Our Lady was the counterpoise to this collapse into doubt provoked by the insinuation and the "sneer" of the demonic.

2) Hence, instead of permitting doubt, she accepts "with all her human and feminine 'I'" (R Ma [Redemptoris Mater] #13), and sings her Magnificat. John Paul II writes: "In contrast with the 'suspicion' which the 'father of lies' sowed in the heart of Eve the first woman, Mary, whom tradition is wont to call the 'new Eve' and the true 'Mother of the living,' boldly proclaims the undimmed truth about God: the holy and almighty God, who from the beginning is the source of all gifts, he who 'has done great things' in the her, as well as in the whole universe" (R Ma #37).