When Our Lady stood up, a queenly child, and uttered her fiat to the Angel of God, her words began to make Christ’s voice. Those first words of consent had already spoken Christ’s last words of consent; her “I commit myself to you, do whatever you like with me” were already spoken by Christ in her; they were one and the same with His: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
At that moment when Our Lady received the love of the Holy Spirit as the wedded love of her soul, she also received her dead son in her arms. The trust which accepted the utter sweetness of the Infant Jesus between her own hands, looking at her with her own eyes, accepted the stiff, unresponsive corpse that her hands embalmed. This was her son, but more, even more God’s Son. She trusted God, she understood on earth that which many mothers will only understand in heaven; she was able to see her boy killed, lying there bruised from head to foot, wounded and dead, and to believe the Father’s cry: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
God asks for extreme courage in love; the Bride of the Spirit must respond with strength like His own strength. Our Lady did this.
from Caryll Houselander The Reed of God
I’m really struck by that claim that Mary’s fiat contains Christ’s final words on the cross. Her consent and his consent, the same Word.
Beautiful, Melanie.