Ecce Ancilla Domini: Fiat Mihi Secundum Verbum Tuum, A Reflection on the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

In prinicipio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum. Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil quod factum est. In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum: et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt. Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui nomen erat Joannes. Hic venit in testimonium, ut testimonium perhiberet de lumine, ut omnes crederent per illum. Non erat ille lux, sed ut testimonium perhiberet de lumine. Erat lux vera quae illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum. In mundo erat, et mundus per ipsum factus est, et mundus eum non cognovit. In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt. Quotquot autem receperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri, his qui credunt in nomine ejus. Qui non ex sanguinibus, neque ex voluntate carnis, neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo nati sunt. ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST, et habitavit in nobis et vidimus gloriam ejus, gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratiae et veritatis.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light. That was the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them He gave great power to become the sons of God: to them that believe in His name: who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1: 1-14.)

The Last Gospel (John 1:1-14) is read at the end of most offerings of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition during the course of the liturgical year. It is no accident that the Last Gospel found its way into the offering of the Mass of the ages over the course of time, starting as a private devotion of priests in the Twelfth Century as they walked away from the altar after administering the final blessing and being mandated for use in most of the Masses of the year by Pope Saint Pius V four hundred years later.

As the Mass itself is incarnational, making present the very same Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity Who was made Flesh in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost at the moment of the Annunciation, God the Holy Ghost saw to it that the Gospel of the Incarnation would be read most days of the liturgical year in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Each of us needs to be reminded over and over and over again that the Incarnation of the Word as Flesh in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate Womb changes everything about our own lives and the larger life of the world. The daily reminder provided by the Last Gospel in most Masses during the year helps us to leave Holy Mass with the realization that we are called to make Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ incarnate in every aspect of our own lives, making time to keep Him company in His Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, where He abides incarnate as the Prisoner of Love in tabernacles until the end of time.

Today, Saturday, March 25, 2023, is the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Commemoration of Saturday in the Fourth Week of Lent.

Dom Prosper Gueranger provided a perfect overview of this beautiful day on which the world was changed forever as the Logos, the very Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity through Whom all things were made, became Incarnate in the Virginal and Immaculate and Immaculate Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

This is a great day, not only to man, but even to God Himself; for it is the anniversary of the most solemn event that time has ever witnessed. On this day, the divine Word, by whom the Father created the world, was made flesh in the womb of a virgin, and dwelt among us. [St John i. 14.] We must spend it in joy. Whilst we adore the Son of God who humbled Himself by thus becoming Man, let us give thanks to the Father, who so loved the world, as to give His only-begotten Son; [Ibid. iii. 16] let us give thanks to the Holy Ghost, whose almighty power achieves the great mystery. We are in the very midst of Lent, and yet the ineffable joys of Christmas are upon us: our Emmanuel is conceived on this day, and, nine months hence, will be born in Bethlehem, and the angels will invite us to come and honour the sweet Babe.

During Septuagesima week, we meditated upon the fall of our first parents, and the triple sentence pronounced by God against the serpent, the woman, and Adam. Our hearts were filled with fear as we reflected on the divine malediction, the effects of which are to be felt by all generations, even to the end of the world. But in the midst of the anathemas then pronounced against us, a promise was made us by our God; it was a promise of salvation, and it enkindled hope within us. In pronouncing sentence against the serpent, God said that his head should one day be crushed, and that, too, by a woman.

The time has come for the fulfilment of this promise. The world has been in expectation for four thousand years; and the hope of its deliverance has been kept up, in spite of all its crimes. During this time, God has made use of miracles, prophecies, and types, as a renewal of the engagement He has entered into with mankind. The blood of the Messias has passed from Adam to Noe; from Sem to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; from David and Solomon to Joachim; and now it flows in the veins of Mary, Joachim’s daughter. Mary is the woman by whom is to be taken from our race the curse that lies upon it. God has decreed that she should be Immaculate; and has thereby set an irreconcilable enmity between her and the serpent. She, a daughter of Eve, is to repair all the injury done by her mother’s fall; she is to raise up her sex from the degradation into which it has been cast; she is to co-operate, directly and really, in the victory which the Son of God is about to gain over His and our enemy.

A tradition, which has come down from the apostolic ages, tells us that the great mystery of the Incarnation was achieved on the twenty-fifth day of March. [St. Augustine, De Trinitate. Lib. iv. cap. v.] It was at the hour of midnight, when the most holy Virgin was alone and absorbed in prayer, that the Archangel Gabriel appeared before her, and asked her, in the name of the blessed Trinity, to consent to become the Mother of God. Let us assist, in spirit, at this wonderful interview between the angel and the Virgin: and, at the same time, let us think of that other interview which took place between Eve and the serpent. A holy bishop and martyr of the second century, Saint Irenaeus, who had received the tradition from the very disciples of the apostles, shows us that Nazareth is the counterpart of Eden. [Adv. haereses. Lib. v. cap. xix.]

In the garden of delights there is a virgin and an angel; and a conversation takes place-between them. At Nazareth a virgin is also addressed by an angel, and she answers him; but the angel of the earthly paradise is a spirit of darkness, and he of Nazareth is a spirit of light. In both instances it is the angel that has the first word. ‘Why,’ said the serpent to Eve, ‘hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?’ His question implies impatience and a solicitation to evil; he has contempt for the frail creature to whom he addresses it, but he hates the image of God which is upon her.

See, on the other hand, the angel of light; see with what composure and peacefulness he approaches the Virgin of Nazareth, the new Eve; and how respectfully he bows himself down before her: ‘Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou among women!’ Such language is evidently of heaven: none but an angel could speak thus to Mary.

Eve imprudently listens to the tempter’s words; she answers him; she enters into conversation with one that dares to ask her to question the justice of God’s commands. Her curiosity urges her on. She has no mistrust in the serpent; this leads her to mistrust her Creator.

Mary hears what Gabriel has spoken to her; but this most prudent Virgin is silent. She is surprised at the praise given her by the angel. The purest and humblest of virgins has a dread of flattery; and the heavenly messenger receives no reply from her, until he has fully explained his mission by these words: ‘Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a Son: and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David His father: and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end.’

What magnificent promises are these, which are made to her in the name of God! What higher glory could she, a daughter of Juda, desire, knowing, as she does, that the fortunate Mother of the Messias is to be the object of the greatest veneration? And yet it tempts her not. She has for ever consecrated her virginity to God, in order that she may be the more closely united to Him by love. The grandest possible privilege, if it is to be on the condition of violating this sacred vow, would be less than nothing in her estimation. She thus answers the angel: ‘How shall this be done? because I know not man.’

The first Eve evinces no such prudence or disinterestedness. No sooner has the wicked spirit assured her that she may break the commandment of her divine Benefactor and not die; that the fruit of her disobedience will be a wonderful knowledge, which will put her on an equality with God Himself: than she immediately yields; she is conquered. Her self-love has made her at once forget both duty and gratitude: she is delighted at the thought of being freed from the twofold tie which binds her to her Creator.

Such is the woman that caused our perdition. But how different is she that was to save us! The former cares not for her posterity; she looks but to her own interests: the latter forgets herself to think only of her God, and of the claims He has to her service. The angel, charmed with this sublime fidelity,, thus answers the question put to him by Mary, and reveals to her the designs of God: ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren; because no word shall be impossible with God.’ This said, he is silent, and reverently awaits the answer of the Virgin of Nazareth.

Let us look once more at the virgin of Eden. Scarcely has the wicked spirit finished speaking than Eve casts a longing look at the forbidden fruit: she is impatient to enjoy the independence it is to bring her. She rashly stretches forth her hand; she plucks the fruit; she eats it, and death takes possession of her: death of the soul, for sin extinguishes the light of life; and death of the body, which, being separated from the source of immortality, becomes an object of shame and horror, and finally crumbles into dust.

But let us turn away our eyes from this sad spectacle, and fix them on Nazareth. Mary has heard the angel’s explanation of the mystery; the will of heaven is made known to her, and how grand an honour it is to bring upon her! She, the humble maid of Nazareth, is to have the ineffable happiness of becoming the Mother of God, and yet the treasure of her virginity is to be left to her! Mary bows down before this sovereign will, and says to the heavenly messenger: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word.’

Thus, as the great St. Irenaeus and so many of the holy fathers remark, the obedience of the second Eve repaired the disobedience of the first: for no sooner does the Virgin of Nazareth speak her fiat, ‘be it done,’ than the eternal Son of God (who, according to the divine decree, awaited this word) is present, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, in the chaste womb of Mary, and there He begins His human life. A Virgin is a Mother, and Mother of God; and it is this Virgin’s consenting to the divine will that has made her conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost. This sublime mystery puts between the eternal Word and a mere woman the relations of Son and Mother; it gives to the almighty God a means whereby He may, in a manner worthy of His majesty, triumph over Satan, who hitherto seemed to have prevailed against the divine plan.

Never was there a more entire or humiliating defeat than that which this day befell Satan. The frail creature, over whom he had so easily triumphed at the beginning of the world, now rises and crushes his proud head. Eve conquers in Mary. God would not choose man for the instrument of His vengeance; the humiliation of Satan would not have been great enough; and therefore she who was the first prey of hell, the first victim of the tempter, is selected to give battle to the enemy. The result of so glorious a triumph is that Mary is to be superior not only to the rebel angels, but to the whole human race, yea, to all the angels of heaven. Seated on her exalted throne, she, the Mother of God, is to be the Queen of all creation. Satan, in the depths of the abyss, will eternally bewail his having dared to direct his first attack against the woman, for God has now so gloriously avenged her; and in heaven, the very Cherubim and Seraphim reverently look up to Mary, and deem themselves honoured when she smiles upon them, or employs them in the execution of any of her wishes, for she is the Mother of their God.

Therefore is it that we, the children of Adam, who have been snatched by Mary’s obedience from the power of hell, solemnize this day of the Annunciation. Well may we say of Mary those words of Debbora, when she sang her song of victory over the enemies of God’s people: ‘The valiant men ceased, and rested in Israel, until Debbora arose, a mother arose in Israel. The Lord chose new wars, and He Himself overthrew the gates of the enemies.’ [Judges v. 7, 8.] Let us also refer to the holy Mother of Jesus these words of Judith, who by her victory over the enemy was another type of Mary: ‘Praise ye the Lord our God, who hath not forsaken them that hope in Him. And by me, His handmaid, He hath fulfilled His mercy, which He promised to the house of Israel; and He hath killed the enemy of His people by my hand this night. … The almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman, and hath slain him.’ [Judith xiii. 17. 18; xvi. 7.] (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.)

As we just read in the selection from Dom Prosper Gueranger'sThe Liturgical Year just above, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became Incarnate in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost so as to assume a perfect human nature, that of Adam before his fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, with which to pay back the debt of Adam’s sin to Himself in His Infinity as God on the wood of the Holy Cross. The entire world is meant to be shaped by a specific and categorical acceptance of the Incarnation as the defining moment in human history, making it therefore possible for God to enter human history as one of us in all things except sin so as to undergo His Passion and Death and thus to destroy the power of sin and death forever. The fact of the Incarnation and its meaning was entrusted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Deposit of Faith He gave Holy Mother Church to be safeguarded and transmitted as the means for each person and each nation to organize the reality of daily living.

The importance of the Incarnation is signified in no small measure by the fact that the Annunciation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to Our Lady by Saint Gabriel the Archangel is the most painted scene in all of the history of art. Every Ave Maria we pray is a reminder of the Annunciation and the Incarnation that took place as soon as Our Lady gave her perfect fiat to the Father’s will. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis, peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and the hour of our death. Amen. Every Angelus that we pray at six o’clock in the morning, noon, and six o’clock in the evening outside of Paschaltide (although today's feast day is one on which The Angelus would be appropriate) is a reminder of the Incarnation.

Angelus Domini, nuntiavit Mariae;

Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Ecce ancilla Domini.

Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.

Et Verbum caro factum est.

Et habitavit in nobis.

Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genetrix.

Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.

Oremus. Gratiam tuam, quaesumus, Domine, mentibus nostris infunde; ut qui, Angelo nuntiante, Christi Filii tui incarnationem cognovimus, per passionem ejus et crucem, ad resurrectionis gloriam perducamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum.

Amen.

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.

And she conceived by the Holy Ghost.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.

Behold the handmaid of the Lord.

Be it done unto me according to thy word.

And the Word was made Flesh.

And dwelt among us.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.

That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray: Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen.

The centrality of the Incarnation is important to meditate upon at all times. One of the worst features of the liturgical revolution was the elimination of the Last Gospel in the years leading up to the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service. The Ordo Missae of 1965 suppressed The Last Gospel. The counterfeit church of conciliarism’s suppression of a universal practice in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church for four centuries was, obviously, maintained in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service itself. This has wrought incalculable damage in the lives of those Catholics who have remained in the conciliar structures.

The Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo service of its evil nature has diminished, if not entirely obliterated in many places, belief in and respect for the Real Presence of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament, leaving aside entirely the little fact that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not present in the stagings of the Novus Ordo. The distinction between the hierarchical priesthood of the ordained priest and the common priesthood of the faithful that each Catholic has by means of his Baptism has been blurred in a spirit of egalitarianism, fostered in large part by the invasion of the sanctuary by the laity during the offering of Mass.

The focus in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service, staged as it is facing the people, a Protestant novelty that had no parallel in any liturgical rite of the Catholic Church, East or West, prior to 1965, is on the person of the particular “priest” rather than on the action of the “priest” acting in persona Christi as the sacerdos. All of this, in addition to many other things I pointed out in G.I.R.M. Warfare, helps to mitigate against the incarnational reality of the Mass and thus makes it more difficult for Catholics who have not as of yet found they way out of the parishes that are under conciliar captivity at present to understand that the Incarnation of the Word in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate womb at the moment of the Annunciation is meant to change everything about how they live and the choices they make in their daily lives without any exception whatsoever.

The civil state itself is meant to be organized around the centrality of the Incarnation, Nativity, Hidden Years, Public Ministry, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Word made Flesh in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate Womb to the Father’s right hand in glory. Modernity has waged an unremitting and relentlessly violent war on the necessity of belief in everything that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted to Holy Mother Church in the Deposit of Faith as the foundation of all personal sanctity and hence all social order.

Martin Luther himself sought to separate the “private” belief of a Christian prince from the “praxis” of his civil rule, thus giving Machiavellianism an ostensibly Christian gloss.

Freemasonry is of its nature a society that exists to make the Incarnation a matter of private belief that has no relationship at all to the pursuit of the common good, founded as that pursuit is on man’s ability to live a life of “civic virtue” unaided by belief in, access to and cooperation with sanctifying grace. It is precisely the insidious influences of the so-called philosophies and ideologies of Modernity and the influences of Protestantism and all of its bewildering contradictions and permutations that helped to give rise to the heresy of Modernism , condemned so effectively and thoroughly in the critique of it offered by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, issued on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 8, 1907.

An acceptance of Modernity’s rejection of the Incarnation as absolutely essential for the right ordering of men and their nations has become one of the most troublesome features of the conciliarist era. It is important to contrast once again conciliarism’s embrace of Modernity with Pope Saint Pius X’s rejection of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church found in Pascendi Dominici Gregis:

Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to know how the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the philosopher, it must be observed that, although the philosopher recognizes the reality of the divine as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be found by him but in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling and affirmation, and therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but the question as to whether in itself it exists outside that feeling and affirmation is one which the philosopher passes over and neglects. For the Modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the reality of the divine does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, he answers: In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of stating the question: In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God’s existence and His action both within and without man as far to exceed any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some, like the Rationalists, they say that this arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience which makes the person who acquires it to be properly and truly a believer.

How far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican Council. Later on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those which we have already mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found in any religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by not a few. On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That they cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? Certainly it would be either on account of the falsity of the religious .sense or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sense, although it maybe more perfect or less perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to be true, has but to respond to the religious sense and to the believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict between different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid, and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these errors as to convey the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.

There is yet another element in this part of their teaching which is absolutely contrary to Catholic truth. For what is laid down as to experience is also applied with destructive effect to tradition, which has always been maintained by the Catholic Church. Tradition, as understood by the Modernists, is a communication with others of an original experience, through preaching by means of the intellectual formula. To this formula, in addition to its representative value they attribute a species of suggestive efficacy which acts firstly in the believer by stimulating the religious sense, should it happen to have grown sluggish, and by renewing the experience once acquired, and secondly, in those who do not yet believe by awakening in them for the first time the religious sense and producing the experience. In this way is religious experience spread abroad among the nations; and not merely among contemporaries by preaching, but among future generations both by books and by oral transmission from one to another. Sometimes this communication of religious experience takes root and thrives, at other times it withers at once and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof of truth, since for them life and truth are one and the same thing. Thus we are once more led to infer that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not survive. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

The accommodation made with Modernity by the ethos of conciliarism, which rejects the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as the absolute necessity for the possibility of a stable and just social order, leads to all manner of internal contradictions that are impossible to reconcile absent a return to the patrimony of the Church’s consistent Social Teaching as enunciated so clearly by Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, and Pius XI. Everything must be centered around the fact of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Incarnation and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross. Pope Leo XIII noted this in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, issued on the Feast of All Saints, November 1, 1900:

It is surely unnecessary to prove, what experience constantly shows and what each individual feels in himself, even in the very midst of all temporal prosperity-that in God alone can the human will find absolute and perfect peace. God is the only end of man. All our life on earth is the truthful and exact image of a pilgrimage. Now Christ is the “Way,” for we can never reach God, the supreme and ultimate good, by this toilsome and doubtful road of mortal life, except with Christ as our leader and guide. How so? Firstly and chiefly by His grace; but this would remain “void” in man if the precepts of His law were neglected. For, as was necessarily the case after Jesus Christ had won our salvation, He left behind Him His Law for the protection and welfare of the human race, under the guidance of which men, converted from evil life, might safely tend towards God. “Going, teach ye all nations . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew xxviii., 19-20). “Keep my commandments” john xiv., 15). Hence it will be understood that in the Christian religion the first and most necessary condition is docility to the precepts of Jesus Christ, absolute loyalty of will towards Him as Lord and King. A serious duty, and one which oftentimes calls for strenuous labour, earnest endeavour, and perseverance! For although by Our Redeemer’s grace human nature hath been regenerated, still there remains in each individual a certain debility and tendency to evil. Various natural appetites attract man on one side and the other; the allurements of the material world impel his soul to follow after what is pleasant rather than the law of Christ. Still we must strive our best and resist our natural inclinations with all our strength “unto the obedience of Christ.” For unless they obey reason they become our masters, and carrying the whole man away from Christ, make him their slave. “Men of corrupt mind, who have made shipwreck of the faith, cannot help being slaves. . . They are slaves to a threefold concupiscence: of will, of pride, or of outward show” (St. Augustine, De Vera Religione, 37). In this contest every man must be prepared to undergo hard ships and troubles for Christ’s sake. It is difficult to reject what so powerfully entices and delights. It is hard and painful to despise the supposed goods of the senses and of fortune for the will and precepts of Christ Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But the Christian is absolutely obliged to be firm, and patient in suffering, if he wish to lead a Christian life. Have we forgotten of what Body and of what Head we are the members? “Having joy set before Him, He endured the Cross,” and He bade us deny ourselves. The very dignity of human nature depends upon this disposition of mind. For, as even the ancient Pagan philosophy perceived, to be master of oneself and to make the lower part of the soul, obey the superior part, is so far from being a weakness of will that it is really a noble power, in consonance with right reason and most worthy of a man. Moreover, to bear and to suffer is the ordinary condition of man. Man can no more create for himself a life free from suffering and filled with all happiness that he can abrogate the decrees of his Divine Maker, who has willed that the consequences of original sin should be perpetual. It is reasonable, therefore, not to expect an end to troubles in this world, but rather to steel one’s soul to bear troubles, by which we are taught to look forward with certainty to supreme happiness. Christ has not promised eternal bliss in heaven to riches, nor to a life of ease, to honours or to power, but to longsuffering and to tears, to the love of justice and to cleanness of heart.

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour’s Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God’s law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men’s salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: “He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me” (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man’s “Way”; the Church also is his “Way”-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from “The Way.” The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. “And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him” (Daniel vii., 14). “I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession” (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God’s providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men’s minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Pope Leo XIII’s writings resonate with clarity. Once again, for the sake of emphasis, a quotation contained from the passage above:

By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men’s salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: “He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me” (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man’s “Way”; the Church also is his “Way”-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

There is no wiggle room here, no “appreciation” for the ability of false religions to contribute to the establishment of States and to the pursuit of the common good. There is simply the truth of the Catholic Faith that belief in everything Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted to Holy Mother Church is necessary for personal sanctity and hence all social order. In other words, the Incarnation matters and must be the foundation of everything in social life without exception (culture, entertainment, the arts, literature, politics, economics, home life, education–and any other aspect of social life one wants to name).

You see, the King of Kings Who condescended to become one of us in Our Lady’s womb was teaching us from the moment of His Incarnation. He taught us from within Our Lady that all innocent human life is inviolable from the moment of conception through all subsequent stages until natural death. He is in solidarity with every child conceived in every mother’s womb, no matter the physical condition of the child or the conditions in which the child was conceived. He became Flesh in Our Lady’s womb to redeem all flesh. And it is on His authority alone that we are to defend the inviolability of all innocent human life. Indeed, the Annunciation is a feast day which is meant to remember that He Who is Life Himself became Flesh for our sakes so that we would be able to use this mortal life of ours in cooperation with the graces He won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, so as to enjoy an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

It is important to bear this in mind today, Friday, March 25, 2022, on the Feast of the Annuncation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as over three thousand innocent preborn babies will be put to death in their mothers’ wombs by surgical means under cover of the civil law. Countless thousands more will die as a result of abortifacient pills and devices. We must pray extra Rosaries of reparation today for the crime of abortion, both chemical and surgical, and for the conversion of all of those who support this crime, are guilty of committing it and/or who have been silent or indifferent about it. Moreover, we must pray in reparation for the abortion of souls wrought by the counterfeit church of conciliarism that has made it more possible for Catholic women to consider it their “civil right” to murder Our Lord mystically in the persons of their preborn children inside of their own wombs.

We must always remember that there would have been no Incarnation or Redemption without Our Lady, however. It was she, the New Eve, who untied the knot of Eve’s prideful disobedience in the Garden of Eden by her fiat to the Father’s will in the garden in Nazareth. Our Lady made it possible for the Gates of Heaven to be reopened. She became the Ark of the New Covenant, the woman who enfleshed the Word with her perfect human nature. She was the first and most perfect Christ-bearer. Our Lady wants each one of us to be Christ-bearers.

No, we cannot enflesh Him the way that she did. The laity cannot enflesh Him the way that a true priest does in the Canon of the Mass. But she wants us to let the worthy reception of His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity by means of Holy Communion so nourish us that we will bear Him courageously and lovingly to an unbelieving world today, especially to our fellow Catholics, to be brave apostles of the Faith, which has been under attack by the world in the quarters of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. She wants us to be as quick to do the Father’s will now as she was at the Annunciation. And the Father’s will is quite simple: to follow His Son in Spirit and in Truth through the true Church founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, so that we will scale the heights of personal sanctity.

Here is an account of the Annunciation as given by Our Lady herself to the Venerable Mary of Agreda as found in The Mystical City of God (all references below are from Mr. Timothy Duff’s New English Edition of The Mystical City of God):

132. The holy archangel saluted our and his Queen and said: Ave gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus (Lk. 1:28). Hearing this new salutation of the angel, this most humble of all creatures was disturbed, but not confused in mind (Lk. 1:29). This disturbance arose from two causes: first, from her humility, for She thought Herself the lowest of the creatures and thus in her humility, was taken unawares at hearing Herself saluted and called the Blessed among women; secondly, when She heard this salute and began to consider within Herself how She should receive it, She was interiorly made to understand by the Lord, that He chose Her for his Mother, and this caused a still greater perturbance, having such a humble opinion of Herself. On account of this perturbance the angel proceeded to explain to Her the decree of the Lord, saying (Lk. 1:30-2): Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with the Lord. Behold thou shalt conceive a Son in thy womb, and shalt give birth to Him; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called Son of the Most High, and the rest as recorded of the holy archangel.

133. Our most prudent and humble Queen alone, among all the creatures, was sufficiently intelligent and magnanimous to estimate at its true value such a new and unheard of sacrament; and in proportion as She realized its greatness, so She was also moved with admiration. But She raised her humble heart to the Lord, who could not refuse Her any petition, and in the secret of her spirit She asked new light and assistance by which to govern Herself in such an arduous transaction; for, as we have said in the preceding chapter (119), the Most High, in order to permit Her to act in this mystery solely in faith, hope and charity, left Her in the common state and suspended all other kinds of favors and interior elevations, which She so frequently or continually enjoyed. In this disposition She replied and said to holy Gabriel, what is written in St. Luke (1:34): "How shall this happen, that I conceive and bear, since I know not, nor can know, man?" At the same time She interiorly represented to the Lord the vow of chastity, which She had made and the espousal, which his Majesty had celebrated with Her.

134. The holy prince Gabriel replied (Ib. 35-6): "Lady, it is easy for the divine power to make Thee a Mother without the co-operation of man; the Holy Spirit shall remain with Thee by a new presence and the virtue of the Most High shall overshadow Thee, so that the Holy of holies can be born of Thee, who shall himself be called the Son of God. And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth has likewise conceived a son in her sterile years and this is the sixth month of her conception, for nothing is impossible with God. He that can make her conceive, who was sterile, can bring it about, that Thou, Lady, be his Mother, still preserving thy virginity and enhancing thy purity. To the Son whom Thou shalt bear God will give the throne of his father David (Ib. 32) and his reign shall be everlasting in the house of Jacob. Thou art not ignorant, O Lady, of the prophecy of Isaias (Is. 7: 14), that a Virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son, whose name shall be Emmanuel, God with us. This prophecy is infallible and it shall be fulfilled in thy person. Thou knowest also of the great mystery of the bush, which Moses saw burning without its being consumed by the fire (Ex. 3:2). This signified that the two natures, divine and human, are to be united in such a manner, that the latter is not consumed by the divine, and that the Mother of the Messias shall conceive and give birth without violation of her virginal purity. Remember also, Lady, the promise of the eternal God to the Patriarch Abraham, that, after the captivity of his posterity for four generations, they should return to this land; the mysterious signification of which was, that in this, the fourth generation, the incarnate God is to rescue the whole race of Adam through thy cooperation from the oppression of the devil (Gen. 15:16). [In the original autographed manuscript Ven. Mary of Agreda explains this fourth generation as follows: "The mystery of this fourth generation is that there are four generations: First, that of Adam without a father or mother; second, that of Eve without a mother; third, of our own, from a father and mother; fourth, that of our Lord Jesus Christ, from a Mother without a father.”] And the ladder, which Jacob saw in his sleep (Ib. 28:12), was an express figure of the royal way, which the eternal Word was to open up and by which the mortals are to ascend to heaven and the angels to descend to earth. To this earth the Onlybegotten of the Father shall lower Himself in order to converse with men and communicate to them the treasures of his Divinity, imparting to them his virtues and his immutable and eternal perfections."

135. With these and many other words the ambassador of heaven instructed the most holy Mary, in order that, by the remembrance of the ancient promises and prophecies of holy Writ, by the reliance and trust in them and in the infinite power of the Most High, She might overcome her hesitancy at the heavenly message. But as the Lady herself exceeded the angels in wisdom, prudence and in all sanctity, She withheld her answer, in order to be able to give it in accordance with the divine will and that it might be worthy of the greatest of all the mysteries and sacraments of the divine power. She reflected that upon her answer depended the pledge of the most blessed Trinity, the fulfillment of his promises and prophecies, the most pleasing and acceptable of all sacrifices, the opening of the gates of paradise, the victory and triumph over hell, the Redemption of all the human race, the satisfaction of the divine justice, the foundation of the new law of grace, the glorification of men, the rejoicing of the angels, and whatever was connected with the Incarnation of the Onlybegotten of the Father and his assuming the form of servant in her virginal womb (Philip. 2:7).

136. A great wonder, indeed, and worthy of our admiration, that all these mysteries and whatever others they included, should be entrusted by the Almighty to a humble Maiden and made dependent upon her fiat. But befittingly and securely He left them to the wise and strong decision of this courageous Woman (Prov. 31:11), since She would consider them with such magnanimity and nobility, that perforce his confidence in Her was not misplaced. The operations, which proceed within the divine Essence, depend not on the co-operation of creatures, for they have no part in them and God could not expect such co-operations for executing the works ad intra; but in the works ad extra and such as were contingent, among which that of becoming man was the most exalted, He could not proceed without the co-operation of most holy Mary and without her free consent. For He wished to reach this acme of all the works outside Himself in Her and through Her and He wished that we should owe this benefit to this Mother of wisdom and our Reparatrix.

137. Therefore this great Lady considered and inspected profoundly this spacious field of the dignity of Mother of God (Prov. 31:16) in order to purchase it by her fiat; She clothed Herself in fortitude more than human, and She tasted and saw how profitable was this enterprise and commerce with the Divinity (Ib. 17-18). She comprehended the ways of his hidden benevolence and adorned Herself with fortitude and beauty. And having conferred with Herself and with the heavenly messenger Gabriel about the grandeur of these high and divine sacraments, and finding Herself in excellent condition to receive the message sent to Her, her purest soul was absorbed and elevated in admiration, reverence and highest intensity of divine love. By the intensity of these movements and supernal affections, her most pure heart, as it were by natural consequence, was contracted and compressed with such force, that it distilled three drops of her most pure blood, and these, finding their way to the natural place for the act of conception, were formed by the power of the divine and holy Spirit, into the body of Christ our Lord. Thus the matter, from which the most holy humanity of the Word for our Redemption is composed, was furnished and administered by the most pure heart of Mary and through the sheer force of her true love. At the same moment, with a humility never sufficiently to be extolled, inclining slightly her head and joining her hands, She pronounced these words, which were the beginning of our salvation: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Lk. 1:38).

138. At the pronouncing of this fiat, so sweet to the hearing of God and so fortunate for us, in one instant, four things happened. First, the most holy body of Christ our Lord was formed from the three drops of blood furnished by the heart of most holy Mary. Secondly, the most holy soul of the same Lord was created, just as the other souls. Thirdly, the soul and the body united in order to compose his perfect humanity. Fourthly, the Divinity united Itself in the Person of the Word with the humanity, which together became one composite being in hypostatical union; and thus was formed Christ true God and Man, our Lord and Redeemer. This happened in springtime on the twenty-fifth of March, at break or dawning of the day, in the same hour in which our first father Adam was made, and in the year of the creation of the world 5199, which agrees also with the count of the Roman Church in her Martyrology under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. This reckoning is the true and certain one, as was told me when I inquired by command of my superiors. Conformable to this the world was created in the month of March, which corresponds to the beginning of creation. And as the works of the Most High are perfect and complete (Dt. 32:4), the plants and trees come forth from the hands of his Majesty bearing fruit, and they would have borne them continually without intermission, if sin had not changed the whole nature, as I will expressly relate in another treatise, if it is the will of the Lord; now however I will not detain myself therewith, since it does not pertain to our subject.

139. In the same instant, in which the Almighty celebrated the nuptials of the hypostatic union in the womb of most holy Mary, the heavenly Lady was elevated to the beatific vision and the Divinity manifested Itself to Her clearly and intuitively. She saw most high sacraments, of which I will speak in the next chapter. The mysteries of the inscriptions with which She was adorned and which the angels exhibited, as related in the seventh chapter (82; also Con. 207, 363-4), were made clear to Her each in particular. The divine Child began to grow in the natural manner in the recess of the womb, being nourished by the substance and the blood of its most holy Mother, just as other men; yet it was more free and exempt from the imperfections, to which other children of Adam are subject in that place and period. For from some of these, namely those that are accidental and unnecessary to the substance of the act of generation, being merely effects of sin, the Empress of heaven was free. She was also free from the superfluities caused by sin, which in other women are common and happen naturally in the formation, sustenance and growth of their children. For the necessary matter, which is proper to the infected nature of the descendants of Eve and which was wanting in Her, was supplied and administered in Her by the exercise of heroic acts of virtue and especially by charity. By the fervor of her soul and her loving affections the blood and humors of her body were changed and thereby divine Providence provided for the sustenance of the divine Child. Thus in a natural manner the humanity of our Redeemer was nourished, while his Divinity was recreated and pleased with her heroic virtues. Most holy Mary furnished to the Holy Ghost, for the formation of this body, pure and limpid blood, free from sin and all its tendencies. And whatever impure and imperfect matter is supplied by other mothers for the growth of their children was administered by the Queen of heaven most pure and delicate in substance. For it was built up and supplied by the power of her loving affections and her other virtues. In a like manner was purified whatever served as food for the heavenly Queen. For, as She knew that her nourishment was at the same time to sustain and nourish the Son of God, She partook of it with such heroic acts of virtue, that the angelic spirits wondered how such common human actions could be connected with such supernal heights of merit and perfection in the sight of God.

140. The heavenly Lady was thus established in such high privileges in her position as Mother of God that those which I have already mentioned, and which I shall yet mention, convey not even the smallest idea of her excellence, and my tongue cannot describe it, for neither is it possible to conceive it by the understanding, nor can the most learned, nor the most wise of men find adequate terms to express it. The humble, who are proficient in the art of divine love, become aware of it by infused light and by the interior taste and feeling, by which such sacraments are perceived. Not only was most holy Mary become a heaven, a temple and dwelling place of the most holy Trinity, transformed thereto, elevated and made godlike by the special and unheard of operation of the Divinity in her most pure womb; but her humble cottage and her poor little oratory was consecrated by the Divinity as a new sanctuary of God. The heavenly spirits, who as witnesses of this marvelous transformation were present to contemplate it, magnified the Almighty with ineffable praise and jubilee; in union with this most happy Mother, they blessed Him in his name and in the name of the human race, which was ignorant of this the greatest of his benefits and mercies. (Venerable Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God, The Incarnation, Book Three, Chapter IX. See Mr. Timothy Duff’s new English translation of this text: Chapter IX.)

Our Lady always accepted God's Holy Will without any reservation. Fiat Mihi Secundum Verbum Tuum.

Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., offered some pertinent reflections on this great feast day when the New Eve gave her perfect Fiat to the will of the Heavenly Father as that Holy Will was made known to her by Saint Gabriel the Archangel:

Nine months before the feast of Christmas our thoughts turn to that day on which the eternal Word, at the message of the angel, assumed human nature in the womb of the most holy Virgin in order that He might redeem man from his sins and from eternal damnation. This day was the most memorable day in the history of the human race, sine on this day the divinity was united with humanity in a manner more perfect than ever before; in fact, in the most perfect manner possible. This was the day of the betrothal of the Son of God with humanity.

Today the angel comes to the Virgin and tells her: “Fear not, Mary, for thou has found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and shalt bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High.” The virgin is to be a virgin and yet become a mother. “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Then Mary replies, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word” (Gospel). “And the Word was made flesh” in the womb of the Virgin. In the Offertory of the Mass we use the word of the angel to address Mary. Ave Maria: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women.” Mary, the Mother of God, is the masterpiece of God’s creation. Like Christ, the God-man, she stands alone, and there could never be another like her.

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” Mary is truly the handmaid of the Lord, for she conforms perfectly to God’s will and is completely dependent on His designs; her will is one with the divine will. In reply to the glorious message of the angel and the singular honor and distinction that is conferred upon her, Mary says humbly: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word.” At the moment when heaven itself awaits her consent, at the moment when the uncreated Word of the Father descends to become incarnate through her, Mary will look upon herself merely as the handmaid of the Lord. The more she is honored by heaven, the more she humbles herself. Such is the fruit of the greatness that comes to us from God; we must recognize our own unworthiness and insignificance in all humility. A low opinion of self brings with it the gift of greatness which is given by God. Humility brings us close to God and unites us with Him. “He that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matt. 23: 12). “Be it done to me according to thy word.” Mary freely gives her consent, and at that very moment she conceives the Son of God. He at once floods her soul with His light and pours forth upon her all the riches of His grace. She is united with Him most intimately. The feelings and dispositions of the Son become immediately those of the mother, for Jesus and Mary have become intimately united. Mary has no thoughts or impulses that are not in conformity with His. She lives with Him and in Him. In becoming the Mother of God, she subordinates herself completely. She is honored by the eternal One she bears in her womb, and she loses herself in the abyss of divinity. Her exaltation is the result of her humility: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word.” Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel [God with us]” (Epistle). In the womb of the Virgin the Son of God is wedded to humanity. The liturgy treats this union of humanity with the divine king with the greatest reverence. “Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear; for the King hath greatly desired thy beauty.” (Tract; Ps. 44:11 f.). Already the nations approach to pay homage to the queen on the day of her nuptials. The daughters of Tyre lead the way, and in her train in an unending procession follow the representatives of the riches kingdoms of the earth, bearing gifts in their hands as a sign of their homage. “All the rich among the people shall entreat thy countenance. . . . After her shall virgins be brought to the King” (Introit; Tract). These are the men and the nations which shall be converted to Christ. With joy they follow the queen (Mary, the Church) and enter into the chambers of the King. They shall share with her now her supernatural gifts and graces as they will one day share with her forever and ever the joys of eternity. “They shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing; they shall be brought into the temple of the King” through Mary and through the Church (Introit; Tract).

The Son of God desires to be wedded to the human race through His love. Mary is the representative of the whole race. In Mary we and every member of the race were asked to decide whether or not we would accept the offer of almighty God; whether or not we wished to be redeemed. Through Mary we and the whole race of men gave an affirmative answer to God’s proposal. “And the Word was made flesh.” Today we thank the Blessed Virgin for having spoken her fiat as our representative.

Now we, too, must eagerly accept every grace which God offers to us. “After her virgins shall be brought to the King.” That is, pure souls, souls which have been cleansed from everything that could interfere with their spiritual union with God, shall be brought before the throne of God.

“Behold a virgin shall conceive,” the holy liturgy sings in the Communion prayer. The virgin lives again each day in our Holy Mother the Church. Every day in Holy Communion we relive the blessed incarnation of Christ in the Virgin Mary. Would that were as pure and as holy as she!” (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954, pp. 438-440.)

No nation that refuses to honor Our Lady, she who is the very Mother of God, with public Rosary processions in her honor for having made possible our salvation as the fairest flower of our race will ever be “blessed by God.” Nations, my friends, have the absolute obligation to honor Our Lady for making possible our salvation by her perfect Fiat to the will of God the Father, the First Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, on this very day. We deceive ourselves if we think that a nation, such as the United States of America, which was founded by men who had a contempt for Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother, will ever receive God’s “blessings” as long as its leaders refuse to honor publicly the Immaculate Conception in whose Virginal and Immaculate Womb, the Word through Whom all things were made deigned to make of Himself a Prisoner for nine months prior to His miraculous Nativity in the cradle in the stable in the cave in Bethlehem.

Today's Divine Office contains an excerpt of a sermon from Pope Saint Leo the Great on this feast day:

The Almighty and merciful God, Whose nature is goodness, Whose will is power, and Whose work is mercy, did, at the very beginning of the world, as soon as the devil's hatred had mortally poisoned us with the venom of his envy, foretell those remedies which His mercy had foreordained for our healing. He bade the serpent know that there was to be a Seed of the woman Who should yet bruise the swelling of his pestilential head; this Seed was none other than the Christ to come in the flesh, that God and Man in one Person, Who, being born of a Virgin, should, by His undefiled birth, damn the seducer of man.

The devil rejoiced that by his fraud he had so deceived man as to make him lose the gifts of God, forfeit his privilege of eternal life, bring himself under the hard sentence of death, and find in his misery a certain comfort in the accomplice of his guilt; he rejoiced also that God, in His just anger, was changed towards man, whom He had made in such honour. But, dearly beloved brethren, that Unchangeable God, Whose Will cannot be divorced from His goodness, by His own secret counsel carried out in a mysterious way His original purpose of goodness, and man, who had been led into sin by the wicked craft of the devil, perished not to disappoint that gracious purpose of God.

When therefore, dearly beloved brethren, the fulness of that time came, which God had appointed for our Redemption, our Lord Jesus Christ entered this lower world, came down from His heavenly throne, and, while He left not that glory which He hath with the Father before the world was, was incarnate by a new order and a new birth new, in that He Who is Invisible among His own, was made visible among us; He Who is Incomprehensible, willed to be comprehended; He Who is before the ages, began to be in time; the Lord of all shadowed the glory of His Majesty, and took upon Him the form of a servant; the Impassible God vouchsafed to become a man subject to suffering; and the Immortal laid Himself under the laws of death. (Matins, The Divine Office, March 25.)

Human history was changed forever this day as the Word became Flesh, and dwelt amongst us. We better make sure that we are never indifferent to the central fact of human life, making sure always to remember that Word became Flesh to dwell amongst us by the consent given to the Holy Will of God by the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. The very redemption of us sinful men hinged on Our Lady’s consent. How can we be ungrateful to so great a Blessed Mother, the fairest flower of the human race, who was given to us by her Divine Son to be our Mother as she stood so valiantly beneath the foot of His Most Holy Cross?

May Our Lady help each one of us to pray, fast and to make sacrifices for the crushing of counterfeit church of conciliarism and the resurrection of the Catholic Church in all of her glory, including the glories of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, so that every Roman Rite Catholic will leave Holy Mass fortified by having heard the Last Gospel to make Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ incarnate in every human heart, consecrated as each heart must be to her own Immaculate Heart and to her Divine Son’s Most Sacred Heart. May Our Lady help us to find Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He is incarnate as the Prisoner of Love in the tabernacle every day of our lives so that we can obey Him through His Church with readiness and announce His sacred truths with joy to all men, making sure to pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

We pray for the Triumph of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, a triumph that will restore the Social Reign of Christ the King and of her, our Immaculate Queen, making the Incarnation once again the cornerstone in the lives of men and their nations.

ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn’t it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

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Ecce Ancilla Domini: Fiat Mihi Secundum Verbum Tuum, A Reflection on the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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