A young girl from rural Israel receives the message from an angel. She is called to give birth to the Son of the Most High. The scene in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke shows us a normal, young girl with rooted faith and an unpretentious simplicity, a simplicity that by the way is beautifully described in the film The Nativity Story (2006). Confronted with the angel’s message, Mary openheartedly answers: ”I am the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said”.
The Greeks called Mary “theotokos”: the one who gives birth to God, sometimes transcribed as the Mother of God. This is of course not to be understood in sense of Mother of God in eternity, but as the mother of the incarnate Son, Jesus, who is God. Mary is an image of the church, and a model for all Christians, because we are all called to be theotokos, we are all called to bring the Messiah into this world. We are all Christophers, we all carry Christ within us, and Mary shows us how to do this. By listening to God’s Word, both in the liturgy and in prayer, we come to interiorize and assimilate this Word so it becomes a source of God’s own presence in our life.
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