Blessed is She who Believed (John-Paul II)

Immediately after the narration of the Annunciation, the Evangelist Luke guides us in the footsteps of the Virgin of Nazareth towards "a city of Judah" (Lk 1: 39). According to scholars this city would be the modern Ain Karim, situated in the mountains, not far from Jerusalem.

Mary arrived there "in haste," to visit Elizabeth her kinswoman. The reason for her visit is also to be found in the fact that at the Annunciation Gabriel had made special mention of Elizabeth, who in her old age had conceived a son by her husband Zechariah, through the power of God:

"Your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a Son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible" (Lk 1: 36-37).

The divine messenger had spoken of what had been accomplished in Elizabeth in order to answer Mary's question. "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (Lk. 1: 34) It is to come to pass precisely through the "power of the Most High," just as it happened in the case of Elizabeth, and even more so.

Moved by charity, therefore, Mary goes to the house of her kinswoman. When Mary enters, Elizabeth replies to her greeting and feels the child leap in her womb, and being "filled with the Holy Spirit" she greets Mary with a loud cry:

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" (cf. Lk 1: 40-42)

Elizabeth's exclamation or acclamation was subsequently to become part of the Hail Mary, as a continuation of the angel's greeting, thus becoming one of the Church's most frequently used prayers. But still more significant are the words of Elizabeth in the question which follows:

"And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Lk 1: 43)

Elizabeth bears witness to Mary: she recognizes and proclaims that before her stands the Mother of the Lord, the Mother of the Messiah. The son whom Elizabeth is carrying in her womb also shares in this witness:

"The babe in my womb leaped for joy" (Lk 1: 44).

This child is the future John the Baptist, who at the Jordan will point out Jesus as the Messiah.

While every word of Elizabeth's greeting is filled with meaning, her final words would seem to have fundamental importance:

"And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Lk 1: 45).

These words can be linked with the title "full of grace" of the angel's greeting. Both of these texts reveal an essential Mariological content, namely the truth about Mary, who has become really present in the mystery of Christ precisely because she "has believed."

The fullness of grace announced by the angel means the gift of God himself. Mary's faith, proclaimed by Elizabeth at the Visitation, indicates how the Virgin of Nazareth responded to this gift.

As the Council teaches, "'The obedience of faith' (Rom.16: 26; cf. Rom 1: 5; 2 Cor 10: 5-6) must be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man entrusts his whole self freely to God."

This description of faith found perfect realization in Mary. The "decisive" moment was the Annunciation, and the very words of Elizabeth: "And blessed is she who believed" refer primarily to that very moment.

Indeed, at the Annunciation Mary entrusted herself to God completely, with the "full submission of intellect and will," manifesting "the obedience of faith" to him who spoke to her through his messenger. She responded, therefore, with all her human and feminine "I," and this response of faith included both perfect cooperation with "the grace of God that precedes and assists" and perfect openness to the action of the Holy Spirit, who "constantly brings faith to completion by his gifts."

The word of the living God, announced to Mary by the angel, referred to her:

"And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son" (Lk 1: 31).

By accepting this announcement, Mary was to become the "Mother of the Lord," and the divine mystery of the Incarnation was to be accomplished in her: "The Father of mercies willed that the consent of the predestined Mother should precede the Incarnation." And Mary gives this consent, after she has heard everything the messenger has to say. She says:

"Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Lk 1: 38).

This fiat of Mary - "let it be to me" - was decisive, on the human level, for the accomplishment of the divine mystery.

There is a complete harmony with the words of the Son, who, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, says to the Father as he comes into the world:

"Sacrifices and offering you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.... Lo, I have come to do your will, O God" (Heb 10: 5-7).

The mystery of the Incarnation was accomplished when Mary uttered her fiat:

"Let it be to me according to your word,"

which made possible, as far as it depended upon her in the divine plan, the granting of her Son's desire. Mary uttered this fiat in faith.

In faith she entrusted herself to God without reserve and "devoted herself totally as the handmaid of the Lord to the person and work of her Son."⁶

And as the Fathers of the Church teach - she conceived this Son in her mind before she conceived him in her womb: precisely in faith!⁷ Rightly therefore does Elizabeth praise Mary: "And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."

These words have already been fulfilled: Mary of Nazareth presents herself at the threshold of Elizabeth and Zechariah's house as the Mother of the Son of God. This is Elizabeth's joyful discovery: "The mother of my Lord comes to me"!

Mary's faith can also be compared to that of Abraham, whom St. Paul calls "our father in faith" (cf. Rom 4: 12).

In the salvific economy of God's revelation, Abraham's faith constitutes the beginning of the Old Covenant; Mary's faith at the Annunciation inaugurates the New Covenant. Just as Abraham "in hope believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations" (cf. Rom 4: 18),

so Mary, at the Annunciation, having professed her virginity ("How shall this be, since I have no husband?") believed that through the power of the Most High, by the power of the Holy Spirit, she would become the Mother of God's Son in accordance with the angel's revelation:

"The child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God" (Lk 1: 35).

However, Elizabeth's words "And blessed is she who believed" do not apply only to that particular moment of the Annunciation. Certainly the Annunciation is the culminating moment of Mary's faith in her awaiting of Christ, but it is also the point of departure from which her whole "journey towards God" begins, her whole pilgrimage of faith.

And on this road, in an eminent and truly heroic manner- indeed with an ever greater heroism of faith - the "obedience" which she professes to the word of divine revelation will be fulfilled.

Mary's "obedience of faith" during the whole of her pilgrimage will show surprising similarities to the faith of Abraham. Just like the Patriarch of the People of God, so too Mary, during the pilgrimage of her filial and maternal fiat, "in hope believed against hope."

Especially during certain stages of this journey the blessing granted to her "who believed" will be revealed with particular vividness.

To believe means "to abandon oneself" to the truth of the word of the living God, knowing and humbly recognizing

"how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways" (Rom 11: 33).

Mary, who by the eternal will of the Most High stands, one may say, at the very center of those "inscrutable ways" and "unsearchable judgments" of God, conforms herself to them in the dim light of faith, accepting fully and with a ready heart everything that is decreed in the divine plan.

When at the Annunciation Mary hears of the Son whose Mother she is to become and to whom "she will give the name Jesus" (= Savior), she also learns that "the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David," and that

"he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever and of his kingdom there will be no end" (Lk 1:32- 33).

The hope of the whole of Israel was directed towards this. The promised Messiah is to be "great," and the heavenly messenger also announces that "he will be great"- great both by bearing the name of Son of the Most High and by the fact that he is to assume the inheritance of David.

He is therefore to be a king, he is to reign "over the house of Jacob." Mary had grown up in the midst of these expectations of her people: could she guess, at the moment of the Annunciation, the vital significance of the angel's words? And how is one to understand that "kingdom" which "will have no end"?

Although through faith she may have perceived in that instant the she was the mother of the "Messiah King," nevertheless she replied:

"Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Lk 1: 38).

From the first moment Mary professed above all the "obedience of faith," abandoning herself to the meaning which was given to the words of the Annunciation by him from whom they proceeded: God himself.

Later, a little further along this way of the "obedience of faith," Mary hears other words: those uttered by Simeon in the Temple of Jerusalem. It was now forty days after the birth of Jesus when, in accordance with the precepts of the Law of Moses, Mary and Joseph "brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord" (Lk 2: 22).

The birth had taken place in conditions of extreme poverty. We know from Luke that when, on the occasion of the census ordered by the Roman authorities, Mary went with Joseph to Bethlehem, having found "no place in the inn," she gave birth to her Son in a stable and "laid him in a manger" (cf. Lk 2: 7).

A just and God-fearing man, called Simeon, appears at this beginning of Mary's "journey" of faith.

His words, suggested by the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 2:25-27), confirm the truth of the Annunciation. For we read that he took up in his arms the child to whom - in accordance with the angel's command - the name Jesus was given (cf. Lk 2: 21).

Simeon's words match the meaning of this name, which is Savior: "God is salvation." Turning to the Lord, he says:

"For my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel" (Lk 2: 30-32).

At the same time, however, Simeon addresses Mary with the following words:

"Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against, that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed"

and he adds with direct reference to her:

"and a sword will pierce through your own soul also" (cf. Lk 2: 34-35).

Simeon's words cast new light on the announcement which Mary had heard from the angel: Jesus is the Savior, he is "a light for revelation" to mankind.

Is not this what was manifested in a way on Christmas night, when the shepherds come to the stable (cf. Lk 2: 8-20)? Is not this what was to be manifested even more clearly in the coming of the Magi from the East (cf. Mt 2: 1-12)?

But at the same time, at the very beginning of his life, the Son of Mary, and his Mother with him, will experience in themselves the truth of those other words of Simeon: "a sign that is spoken against" (Lk 2: 34).

Simeon's words seem like a second Annunciation to Mary, for they tell her of the actual historical situation in which the Son is to accomplish his mission, namely, in misunderstanding and sorrow.

While this announcement on the one hand confirms her faith in the accomplishment of the divine promises of salvation, on the other hand it also reveals to her that she will have to live her obedience of faith in suffering, at the side of the suffering Savior, and that her motherhood will be mysterious and sorrowful.

Thus, after the visit of the Magi who came from the East, after their homage ("they fell down and worshipped him") and after they had offered gifts (cf. Mt.2: 11), Mary together with the child has to flee into Egypt in the protective care of Joseph, for "Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him" (cf. Mt.2: 13). And until the death of Herod they will have to remain in Egypt (cf. Mt 2: 15).

When the Holy Family returns to Nazareth after Herod's death, there begins the long period of the hidden life. She "who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Lk 1: 45) lives the reality of these words day by day.

And daily at her side is the Son to whom "she gave the name Jesus"; therefore in contact with him she certainly uses this name, a fact which would have surprised no one, since the name had long been in use in Israel.

Nevertheless, Mary knows that he who bears the name Jesus has been called by the angel "the Son of the Most High" (cf. Lk 1: 32). Mary knows she has conceived and given birth to him "without having a husband," by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Most High who overshadowed her (cf. Lk 1: 35), just as at the time of Moses and the Patriarchs the cloud covered the presence of God (cf. Ex 24: 16; 40: 34-35; I Kings 8: 10-12).

Therefore Mary knows that the Son to whom she gave birth in a virginal manner is precisely that "Holy One," the Son of God, of whom the angel spoke to her.

During the years of Jesus' hidden life in the house at Nazareth, Mary's life too is "hid with Christ in God" (cf. Col 3: 3) through faith. For faith is contact with the mystery of God.

Every day Mary is in constant contact with the ineffable mystery of God made man, a mystery that surpasses everything revealed in the Old Covenant. From the moment of the Annunciation, the mind of the Virgin-Mother has been initiated into the radical "newness" of God's self-revelation and has been made aware of the mystery.

She is the first of those "little ones" of whom Jesus will say one day:

"Father, ...you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes" (Mt 11: 25).

For "no one knows the Son except the Father" (Mt 11: 27). If this is the case, how can Mary "know the Son"? Of course she does not know him as the Father does; and yet she is the first of those to whom the Father "has chosen to reveal him" (cf. Mt 11: 26-27; 1 Cor 2: 11).

If though, from the moment of the Annunciation, the Son - whom only the Father knows completely, as the one who begets him in the eternal "today" (cf. Ps 2: 7) was revealed to Mary, she, his Mother, is in contact with the truth about her Son only in faith and through faith!

She is therefore blessed, because "she has believed," and continues to believe day after day amidst all the trials and the adversities of Jesus' infancy and then during the years of the hidden life at Nazareth, where he "was obedient to them" (Lk 2: 51). He was obedient both to Mary and also to Joseph, since Joseph took the place of his father in people's eyes; for this reason, the Son of Mary was regarded by the people as "the carpenter's son" (Mt 13: 55).

The Mother of that Son, therefore, mindful of what has been told her at the Annunciation and in subsequent events, bears within herself the radical "newness" of faith: the beginning of the New Covenant.

This is the beginning of the Gospel, the joyful Good News.

However, it is not difficult to see in that beginning a particular heaviness of heart, linked with a sort of night of faith"- to use the words of St. John of the Cross - a kind of "veil" through which one has to draw near to the Invisible One and to live in intimacy with the mystery. And this is the way that Mary, for many years, lived in intimacy with the mystery of her Son, and went forward in her "pilgrimage of faith," while Jesus "increased in wisdom...and in favor with God and man" (Lk 2: 52).

God's predilection for him was manifested ever more clearly to people's eyes. The first human creature thus permitted to discover Christ was Mary, who lived with Joseph in the same house at Nazareth.

However, when he had been found in the Temple, and his Mother asked him, "Son, why have you treated us so?" The twelve-year-old Jesus answered: "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" And the Evangelist adds:

"And they (Joseph and Mary) did not understand the saying which he spoke to them" (Lk 2: 48-50).

Jesus was aware that "no one knows the Son except the Father" (cf. Mt 11: 27); thus even his Mother, to whom had been revealed most completely the mystery of his divine sonship, lived in intimacy with this mystery only through faith!

Living side by side with her Son under the same roof, and faithfully persevering "in her union with her Son," she "advanced in her pilgrimage of faith," as the Council emphasizes.

And so it was during Christ's public life too (cf. Mk 3: 21-35) that day by day there was fulfilled in her the blessing uttered by Elizabeth at the Visitation: "Blessed is she who believed."

This blessing reaches its full meaning when Mary stands beneath the Cross of her Son (cf. Jn 19: 25).

The Council says that this happened "not without a divine plan": by "suffering deeply with her only-begotten Son and joining herself with her maternal spirit to his sacrifice, lovingly consenting to the immolation of the victim to whom she had given birth," in this way Mary "faithfully preserved her union with her Son even to the Cross." It is a union through faith- the same faith with which she had received the angel's revelation at the Annunciation.

At that moment she had also heard the words:

"He will be great...and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end" (Lk 1: 32-33).

And now, standing at the foot of the Cross, Mary is the witness, humanly speaking, of the complete negation of these words. On that wood of the Cross her Son hangs in agony as one condemned. "He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows...he was despised, and we esteemed him not": as one destroyed (cf. Is 53: 3- 5).

How great, how heroic then is the obedience of faith shown by Mary in the face of God's "unsearchable judgments"!

How completely she "abandons herself to God" without reserve, offering the full assent of the intellect and the will" to him whose "ways are inscrutable" (cf. Rom 11: 33)!

And how powerful too is the action of grace in her soul, how all-pervading is the influence of the Holy Spirit and of his light and power!

Through this faith Mary is perfectly united with Christ in his self- emptying. For "Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men": precisely on Golgotha "humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (cf. Phil 2: 5-8).

At the foot of the Cross Mary shares through faith in the shocking mystery of this self- emptying.

This is perhaps the deepest "kenosis" of faith in human history. Through faith the Mother shares in the death of her Son, in his redeeming death; but in contrast with the faith of the disciples who fled, hers was far more enlightened.

On Golgotha, Jesus through the Cross definitively confirmed that he was the "sign of contradiction" foretold by Simeon. At the same time, there were also fulfilled on Golgotha the words which Simeon had addressed to Mary: "and a sword will pierce through your own soul also."

Yes, truly "blessed is she who believed"! These words, spoken by Elizabeth after the Annunciation, here at the foot of the Cross seem to re-echo with supreme eloquence, and the power contained within them becomes something penetrating.

From the Cross, that is to say from the very heart of the mystery of Redemption, there radiates and spreads out the prospect of that blessing of faith. It goes right back to "the beginning." and as a sharing in the sacrifice of Christ - the new Adam - it becomes in a certain sense the counterpoise to the disobedience and disbelief embodied in the sin of our first parents.

Thus teach the Fathers of the Church and especially St. Irenaeus, quoted by the Constitution Lumen Gentium:

"The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith."

In the light of this comparison with Eve, the Fathers of the Church - as the Council also says - call Mary the "mother of the king" and often speak of "death through Eve, life through Mary."

In the expression "Blessed is she who believed," we can therefore rightly find a kind of "key" which unlocks for us the innermost reality of Mary, whom the angel hailed as "full of grace."

If as "full of grace" she has been eternally present in the mystery of Christ, through faith she became a sharer in that mystery in every extension of her earthly journey. She "advanced in her pilgrimage of faith" and at the same time, in a discreet yet direct and effective way, she made present to humanity the mystery of Christ.

And she still continues to do so. Through the mystery of Christ, she too is present within mankind. Thus through the mystery of the Son the mystery of the Mother is also made clear.

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John Paul II,

Excerpt from Redemptoris Mater, § 12-19