Let it Be Done Unto Me According to Your Will

In our Gospel Mary accepts God's will for us as a model for all time (Luke 1:26-38). Yet, with her words "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Mary reminds us that we too share in the birth of Christ as the Word speaks to us; when we open our hearts and listen; when we let go of the world around us and surrender to him. He speaks not merely through our senses...or in words or sounds. But rather his Word becomes a palpable presence within us. Then we too join Mary in his birth...as the Word becomes our flesh, and we celebrate the birth of love and become bearers of his light to be lived and shared as Jesus did.

Perhaps the words of Bernard of Clairvaux say it best:

Let it be done unto me according to your word. Let it be to me according to your word concerning the Word, Let the Word that was in the beginning with God become flesh from my flesh. Let the Word, I pray, be to me, not as a word spoken only to pass away, but conceived and clothed in flesh, not in the air, that he may remain with us. Let him be, not only to be heard with the ears, but to be seen with the eyes, touched with the hands and borne on the shoulders. Let the Word be to me, not as a word written and silent, but the incarnate and living. That is not traced with dead signs upon dead parchment but livingly impressed in human form upon my caste womb; not by the tracing of a pen of lifeless reed, but by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Let it thus be to me, as was never done to anyone before me, nor after me shall be done

Annunciation Dialogue, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)