Fiat: Let it be!

St. Joseph Church (Cottleville)
Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 20-21, 2008 - 5:00 p.m. & 7:00 a.m.

2 Sm 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
Ps 89
Rom 16:25-27
Lk 1:26-38

On the previous two Sundays, we heard about St. John the Baptist’s mission of preparing the way for Christ. Today the Church directs our minds and hearts to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in whose womb our Lord was conceived at the Annunciation. It is interesting to compare the announcement of John’s birth to his father, Zechariah, and the announcement of Christ’s birth to His mother, Mary. The accounts of these two annunciations seem very similar. Holy fear came over both of them when they encountered the archangel, Gabriel. In each case, the angel spoke of wondrous deeds the child would do. Both of them asked how it was possible for what Gabriel had said to come about – Zechariah because of his and Elizabeth’s advanced age, Mary because she was a virgin. But there is one striking difference we can’t ignore. Zechariah is admonished. The angel takes away his ability to speak. Mary, on the other hand, is praised. “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you! . . . You have found favor with God.”

If both had questioned the angel’s words, asking how it was possible for his words to be fulfilled, why was Zechariah punished and Mary exalted? The answer isn’t clear from a superficial view of these annunciations. We must look deeper, to the interior attitudes of these two children of Israel. Although each had questioned the angel’s words, the attitude underlying their questions were radically different. Zechariah, it seems, was a skeptic. He questioned the angel because he doubted what had been proclaimed to him. We can almost hear him saying to the angel, “I don’t believe you. This is impossible. Don’t you see how old I am?” Mary, on the other hand, must have asked her question in faith. Hers was a marveling in wonder and awe at what had been said to her. We could paraphrase her words as well: “How can this be? What a wondrous thing the Lord wants to work in me, for I am yet a virgin.” Zechariah responds to the angel with pride and doubt, Mary in humility and faith.

Zechariah falls in line with all of humanity from the first man and woman, from the time of the fall. The sin of Adam and Eve was one of pride and doubt. They succumbed to the serpent’s suggestion that God was hiding something from them, that He had something great that He was keeping from them, that they would have to snatch for it themselves. So it was that they doubted God’s love and His goodness and in pride they disobeyed the one law they had been given and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Mary stands in utter contrast, and it is for this reason that she is so exalted by the angel and for all generations afterward. Unlike Adam and Eve, unlike Zechariah, she has complete faith that God has her best interests in mind. She believes that by sending her His angel, God the Father is not trying to deceive her but instead to give her every good gift. Zechariah had been struck dumb by his doubt. In faith, on the other hand, Mary is able to speak the most important words spoken in the history of creation: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”

In the 2nd century, St. Irenaeus expressed very beautifully what Mary’s words meant. “The knot of Eve’s disobedience,” he says, “was untied by Mary’s obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith” (Adv. haeres.). The Catechism also states this truth beautifully: “In the faith of this humble handmaid, the Gift of God found the acceptance he had awaited from the beginning of time” (2617). After millennia of pride and doubt, God the Father, in the fullness of time, finally received the humble and faith-filled consent of one of His creatures.

We often call these history-changing words of Mary her fiat. Fiat is a Latin word. It means, “Let it be done.” This sums up the attitude of Mary in response to the will of God: “Let it be.” Mary spoke her fiat first to the Archangel Gabriel. Yet her heart spoke it again and again throughout her life to God. Even before Gabriel came to her, her life was spotless. She constantly said to God in her heart, “Fiat. Let it be.” And after the birth of Christ, she would have to speak this word again and again. As she raised the Christ-child in her home at Nazareth: Fiat. When it came time for Him to leave her so that He could begin His public ministry: Fiat. Most of all, when she watched her only Son die in agony on the cross, when her own heart was pierced: Fiat.

One modern-day saint who knew this fiat well was Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. It wasn’t until after she died that Mother Teresa’s profound interior life became well-known. Her mission of caring for the poor was firmly rooted and made sense only in the context of her deep life of prayer. So committed was she to doing the Lord’s will in her life that she took a fourth vow when she became a religious sister. Like all consecrated women, she took vows of poverty chastity and obedience. But she sought an even more radical union with Christ, so she took a private fourth vow. She describes it in this way: “I made a vow to God, binding under [pain of] mortal sin, to give God anything that He may ask, ‘Not to refuse Him anything’” (Come, Be My Light, 28). This is Mary’s fiat bearing fruit in our own time. Mother Teresa suffered much. Not only did she live in material poverty but also in spiritual poverty, with very few consolations from the Lord. And yet, throughout her life, she never went back on her vow to refuse the Lord nothing.

As Christmas draws near again this year, may our own refrain be the same. Let us say with our Blessed Mother, let us say with Blessed Teresa, “Fiat: let it be done to me according to your word, O Lord.” We must strive to renew this promise each day. We must strive each day to hand over to the Lord whatever it is that we cling to, whatever it is that we keep from Him out of pride and doubt. It can be any number of things: a teaching of the Church we can’t seem to accept, a burdensome illness we struggle to embrace, a call to make a difficult decision. Whatever we cling to, whatever we are afraid of, let us beg the Lord to give us the grace this Christmas to hand it over to Him. To speak, in union with our Lady, those words that summarize the entire Christian life: “Fiat: Let it be.” A simple warning: This word of humility and faith will likely not make our lives easier. In fact, when we submit our wills to God’s will, He often asks things of us that we would not choose for ourselves. At the same time, however, even pain and suffering become beautiful burdens, because they are carried in union with Christ, and it is that union that will lead us on the sure path to life eternal, to the vision of His glory, and to the fullness of communion with all the angels and saints in the never-ending banquet of the kingdom of heaven.