MARY, OUR MOTHER

THE ANNUNCIATION OF MARY-HER FEAST

3. How Mary Receives the Message.

Consider how Our Lady, so prepared by the Angel, receives the most important part of God's message: that She will be the Mother of God because She will bring forth the Holy of Holies. Mary listens, but instead of immediately giving Her consent as though impelled by self-glory, She instead with great prudence and humility ponders over the words and examines if they coincide with the will of God as shown to Her in His agreement to Her vow of virginity.

Learn prudence of Mary. How easily we believe something to be God's business, seeing it as easily as a suggestion from an angel when it redounds to our won profit or glory. How readily we sprint towards those things that please us. And how often we afterwards realise that the inspiration did not after all come from the Angel of Light but from the Angel of Darkness, and what we thought to be a divine whisper was in reality a temptation! Examine, meditate, take advice, so that you may always be right in your choice and resolves, thereby imitating the prudence of your Heavenly Mother.

[Excerpted from 'MARIAN MEDITATIONS' Book by Rev. Dr. Ildefonso R. Villar, Salesian Philippine Province, Nihil Obstat; Imprimatur]