Jesus by James Martin

that God was asking me to accept this, but I wanted to say, “How can this be? How can I do this?” Mary asks the same questions.
    In response the angel is considerate. Gabriel doesn’t threaten her for the insolence of asking a question or burden her with a physical malady for speaking up, as he did with Zechariah. 13
    Instead, the angel simply asks her to look around. “And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.” Sometimes this verse is interpreted as the angel’s revealing something unknown to Mary: “Here’s a secret—Elizabeth is pregnant.” But it’s just as likely that Mary, Elizabeth’s cousin, would already have heard the astonishing news of the elderly woman’s pregnancy. To my mind, the angel is saying: “You have doubts about what God will do? Then just look at what God has already done.” Looking backward helps Mary to look forward. Awareness leads to trust.
    Frequently I meet with people struggling with devastating news. During those times even the most devout can begin to doubt God’s presence. But often what helps them to regain trust is a simple question: “Has God been with you in difficult times in the past?”
    In the same way that the angel reorients Mary by pointing to what has already happened, a friend can invite us to remember. “Were there times in the past,” a friend might ask, “when you felt like things were confusing, but where you can now see God’s hand?” And often we will pause and say, “Now that you mention it, when I thought I couldn’t possibly go on, I found that something or someone helped me to face my difficulties. God was with me.” Memories of God’s activity in the past enable us to embrace the future.
    Newly confident, Mary says yes. Notice that she does so in absolute freedom. No one coerces her. And she was free to say no. Mary also makes her decision without appealing to a man. She doesn’t ask Joseph for permission. Nor does she tell the angel that she must consult with her father. The young woman living in a patriarchal time makes a decision about the coming king. Someone with little power agrees to bring the powerful one into the world: “Let it be with me according to your word.”
    A close friend recently told me how important this passage has been to her as a mother. She prays with Denise Levertov’s poem “The Annunciation” every week, she said. The poem reads, in part:
    But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage .
    The engendering Spirit
    did not enter her without consent .
    God waited .
    My friend told me, “Both the Gospel passage and the poem remind me to consent with grace and courage in a physical way to the presence of God in my life.” This reality was made clearer to her after giving birth to her two children. “I can’t emphasize how important this freedom to respond to God is in my life, and to do so bodily only heightened this.”
    With God’s help the world is poised for something new, something that even Mary may not be able to understand fully, perhaps until the Resurrection. Remember that Mary was told that her son would be the Son of God, not that he would be tortured, put to death on a cross, and then rise from the dead. Mary says yes to a future that she does not know. She is an example of letting God do God’s work, without trying to figure it out.
    When we say yes to God, we are usually surprised by the results. We say “I do” during a wedding and receive blessings far beyond what we could have imagined. We accept a position as a teacher and our lives are changed by our students. More simply, we say yes to God and are completely transformed.
    T HE FIRST MIRACULOUS STORY in this book is a good place to ask a question that will arise frequently during our pilgrimage into the life