Could Mary Have Said No?

Mary, the Truly Free Woman

Mary lives and fulfills her freedom by giving herself to God and welcoming God’s gift. The Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly presented Mary of Nazareth as the supreme expression of human freedom in the cooperation of the human being with God, who, in the sublime event of the incarnation of the Son, entrusted Himself to the free and active ministry of a woman. The convergence between the data of faith and the data of the anthropological sciences, when these turned their attention to Mary of Nazareth, has made it clearer that the Virgin is at once the highest historical realization of the Gospel and the woman who, through her self-mastery, sense of responsibility, openness to others, spirit of service, strength, and love, most fully realized herself on the human level. Mary’s whole life was a free, courageous, and trusting “yes” to God. In this “yes” we can discover the secret of her freedom and, therefore, of her fully realized humanity.

As Benedict XVI stated: “by presenting herself in total dependence on God, Mary in truth expresses an attitude of full freedom, grounded in full respect for her dignity.” Mary’s “yes” is born of deep and conscious reflection within her conscience. From this reflection arises her “here I am,” spoken in complete freedom to the Word of God, understood and therefore accepted. The Pontiff himself writes: “she speaks and thinks with the Word of God. The Word of God becomes her word, and her word is born of the Word of God. In this way it is also revealed that her thoughts are attuned to the thoughts of God, that her will is a will together with God. Being intimately penetrated by the Word of God, she can become mother of the Word incarnate.”

This constant meditation helps Mary to overcome her own individuality and to open herself to the understanding and acceptance of the mysterious plan of God, who wills her to be, at Christ’s side, Mother, Companion, and Disciple, entrusting to her a universal mission. Mary becomes ever more aware that each of her acts and choices involves all of humanity, and it is in this awareness that the very foundation of her freedom, full realization, glorification, and queenship lies. In Mary’s life experience, therefore, we discover the full encounter between two freedoms: the highest and most authentic expression of human freedom, that is, the freedom to choose definitively the path of Truth, and the most astonishing manifestation of divine freedom, which expresses God’s deep and ardent desire to establish, in Christ, a relationship of friendship with man.

We witness the wondrous and ineffable fusion of two yeses, the divine and the human, whose fruit is the fullness of new life in Christ, the God-Man of the eternal yes. Jesus of Nazareth is the fruit of the absolute freedom of God, who, in His infinite goodness, decided to establish a relationship of friendship with His creature. Mary’s yes is inserted into that definitive and founding yes which is the salvation of Christ, as Saint Paul reminds us: “The Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you, was not ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ but in him there was ‘yes’” (2 Cor 1:19). From this encounter are born Mary’s freedom and true humanity: humanity fulfilled.

Mary, Paradigm of Rationality, Freedom, and Faith

In the Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Mater, Pope John Paul II writes: “Totally dependent on God and entirely directed toward Him by the impulse of faith, Mary, at the side of her Son, is the most perfect icon of the freedom and liberation of humanity and of the cosmos.” In Mary, the true woman, innocent and free of any alienation, there shine together the sincere qualities of true humanity and of true faith, which every human being, called to rebirth in Christ, where God’s original plan for His creature is translated into reality, must possess and practice.

God’s Revelation, which calls to true fullness, spurs man and woman to accomplish their liberation following the example of the “yes” of the Woman of Nazareth. By echoing an identical “yes” in their lives, they discover, as Pascal rightly stated, that “man infinitely transcends man,” that the deepest longings of their hearts are boundless, and that man is made to live in the freedom of God, which is the Love of God in itself. Responding to God with his conscious act of freedom, as Mary did, the human being sets out toward his full and complete realization, flying on the wings of faith and reason toward the full knowledge of the Truth.

Human freedom is man’s power to determine himself, to be the author of his own actions, responding to the attraction of the values that perfect him and fulfill him completely as spirit and in the world. The essence of freedom is being able to walk toward the fullness of the Good, to adhere to it, and to love it without external or internal constraints. In its encounter with the Good, freedom finds itself in its element, attains its full realization, and fully recognizes itself. Turning away from this perspective of full realization, man is no longer free; rather, he destroys himself, fails to fulfill himself, and does not reach his fullness.

Contemporary man, weighed down by subjectivism, seems incapable of understanding and living his true freedom in this way. His concept of freedom, in fact, claims the absolutization of the self, that is, the capacity to be sufficient unto oneself, to prevail over others, and no longer to need God. Mary teaches that it is not in the divinization of subjectivity that we find our true freedom, but rather in the open and conscious encounter with the Other, who becomes a Partner, understood and accepted, for an authentic dialogue of life. In the face of the many modern misunderstandings about what freedom is and where it lies, Mary shows us that true freedom, the freedom that truly fulfills us as persons and makes us builders of a more just and balanced world, is the freedom that is firmly grounded in the knowledge and acceptance, without reservation, of God, the Truth, the Love, who became Christ, the only Liberator and Savior of man.

Engaged as a fully free and active woman in the revolutionary project of salvation, Mary proclaims to the world that only the redeeming power of God does justice to every man and frees him from the chains of his many forms of slavery. In the Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus, Pope Paul VI writes:

“Mary of Nazareth was anything but a passively submissive woman or one of an alienating religiosity; rather, she was a woman who did not hesitate to proclaim that God is the avenger of the humble and the oppressed, and that He casts down the mighty of the world from their thrones (cf. Lk 1:51-53). A strong woman, who knew poverty and suffering, exile and banishment (cf. Mt 2:13-23): situations that cannot escape the attention of those who wish to follow, with an evangelical spirit, the liberating energies of man and of society. It is evident how the figure of the Virgin does not disappoint certain profound expectations of the people of our time and offers them the complete model of the disciple of the Lord: a builder of the earthly and temporal city, yet a diligent pilgrim toward the heavenly and eternal one; a promoter of the justice that sets the oppressed free and of the charity that assists the needy, but above all an active witness of the love that builds up Christ in hearts.”

To contemporary man, often torn between anguish and hope, prostrated by the sense of his limitations and assailed by boundless aspirations, disquieted in mind and divided in heart, his mind suspended before the enigma of death, oppressed by loneliness while yearning for communion, in the grip of boredom and nausea, the Blessed Virgin Mary offers a serene vision and a reassuring word: the victory of hope over anguish, of communion over loneliness, of peace over disquiet, of joy and beauty over boredom and nausea, of eternal perspectives over temporal ones, of life over death.

Conclusion

May Mary, the true woman, image of the feminine world, help the women and men of our time, in this arduous transition from one anthropological era to another, not to lose themselves in the void, but to know how to find the right paths to open themselves to the knowledge of God and to interpret life with the delicate and strong, conscious and resolute categories of her femininity. In this world, so superficial and marked by storms and by the distortions of reason, may She, the image not only of the new woman but of the new humanity preserved from the mirages of false liberations, teach them how to be truly free.

May Mary, a woman without rhetoric, whose supernatural greatness hangs on the swift tremor of a “yes,” guide all of us to find or rediscover, in the brevity of a “yes” given to God, the vast sea of love. May She, precisely She, the Virgin of the morning, in whom all is humanity and all is faith, all is meditation and all is response, accompany us along the bends of our life, beyond the abysses of nothingness, and transform us into truly free people, on our way toward the splendor of the Light of Truth.

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For a deeper theological reflection on Mary’s free consent at the Annunciation, consult the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater of Pope John Paul II.