The "Yes" That Set Humanity Free

ZENIT - Reflection for the Solemnity of the Annunciation by Mark Miravalle

Free cooperator

Any erroneous idea that Mary was simply a "physical channel" and not a free, moral cooperator in this event of salvation does harm to the authentic revelation and image of an infinitely loving Father, a God who does not use people or their bodies against their will. Mary was a free, personal, and feminine cooperator in God's plan of salvation. It was not a Pope, nor a bishop, nor a priest, nor a layman who joined the New Adam in redeeming the world by her fiat and consequent lifetime of fiats. It was a woman who became a mother. This was neither an accident nor accidental to divine providence. It was God's perfect will to grace the human race with a new "Eva" or mother of the living.

The Immaculate Virgin's fiat was indeed a lifetime yes to cooperating with Jesus in the Father's mission of Redemption. Gabriel does not re-appear at Calvary, offering the same Virgin a second invitation of being spared from the climax of the cross of her vocation, which was to share in the horrific immolation and redeeming death of the victim born of her ("Lumen Gentium," No. 58). Mary's yes to the greatest human suffering along with her Son was already given some 33 years earlier...