Be It Done to Me

With this statement Mary offers herself with a sign that says Free and at Your Service. With these words Our Lady reveals a tremendous confidence, an audacious and even reckless abandon placing herself into the hands of the Father, no matter what may happen, accepting every risk, submitting herself completely to any eventuality or emergency that the future may hold.

Mary is moving in the spirit of the “poor ones of God,” and in that context, as I see it, the Lord does not make direct reference to her response although it certainly includes the divine maternity. After all, the divine maternity consisted of immortal glory, and to accept it was wonderful and easy. But in this “Yes” I see a much deeper and profound amplitude: her “Yes” pulsated and pounded, and was more like a universal consecration, a self-surrender without reservations or limitations, an acceptance with open arms of any event willed or permitted by the Father.

With her “Be it done...” Our Lady was actually saying Amen to that night in Bethlehem, with no home, no crib and no help. Although she had no explicit knowledge of the details...she was saying Amen to the flight to an unknown and hostile Egypt, Amen to God’s silence in those thirty years. Amen to the hostility of the Sanhedrin. Amen when the political, religious and military forces grabbed her Jesus, torturing and crucifying Him until He died, Amen to all, as much as the Father was permitting, or that she could not change. To sum it all up, the Mother, with her Yes was plunging into depths of those abundant waters already flowing and replete with the Poor People of God, the ones who never ask, nor question, nor protest, but who surrender themselves silently, placing all trust in the hands of their all-powerful and all loving dear Lord and Father.

Extracted from the book “The Silence of Mary” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga