On the Feast of the Annunciation

When I was a postulant, our prioress, Sr. Mary Annunciata, asked me to deliver the sermon at Lenten chapter one year. It was to be about the Annunciation, which is usually celebrated on March 25; but that particular year, Good Friday happened to fall on that date. I wanted to combine both of these important events in my sermon. Also, I have a great devotion to the Divine Will, and believe that our sanctification lies in our obedience to that Will. Here is the sermon I wrote for chapter:


Fiat. "Let it be done." In the Bible, the very first word God utters is fiat -- "Fiat lux," he said, "Let there be light." And with that word began the universe, the world, mankind, human history, and, in time, the history of human salvation.

Twice more in the history of salvation was that word spoken, by the two key figures in that history: Jesus and Mary.

Much has been written about Mary as the New Eve. When she said fiat in response to the glorious vocation announced to her by the angel, she reversed forever the disobedience of our fallen mother and, with her simple "let it be done," set into motion God's greatest work since the Creation: the redemption of his own creatures. But though it all happened in accordance with his divine plan, revealed to man through heavenly messengers and the prophets, it is clear that the reversal of Eve's disobedience could not have been accomplished had Mary been coerced in any way to give her consent; it had to be given of her own free will. Thus, that same human free will which, exercised by our first mother, brought about the fall of Man, now, exercised by our Eternal Mother, is the instrument through which is brought about Man's salvation.

Though Mary was troubled at Gabriel's words -- not because she doubted their validity, but only because she was unclear as to how it could happen -- she nevertheless gave her fiat with the complete trust and faith inherent in her sinless nature. Great and exalted as her fiat was, it portended an even greater: that of Jesus, spoken in utter desolation, in the depths of his agony in Gethsemane. This was the fiat of a man who, though sinless like Mary, was crushed beneath the sins of the men of centuries since centuries began; a man who was tormented by the temptation of Adam and Eve and all their generations of descendants; a man who, burdened by the ingratitude, inconstancy, vices, and vanities of those very creatures whom he created out of his infinite love, embraced that heaviest of burdens in his human arms and offered it in the ultimate human triumph to the Father, saying, "Non mea voluntas, sed tua fiat" -- "Not my will, but Thine, be done."

The twenty-fifth of March was the date that the early Church universally understood to be the actual day of the Crucifixion. How fitting, then that this year, Good Friday should have fallen on the Feast of the Annunciation. Mary, at the crucial moment of the Annunciation, and Jesus, at the turning point of his Passion, both gave the only response they could give: fiat. They both knew that it was only by submission to God's will, through complete trust and faith in his will, that man could be saved. And so it was, too, that Jesus our Savior gave us the most powerful prayer we could offer -- the "Our Father" -- in which he taught us to say, "Fiat voluntas tua"  -- "Thy will be done."

The world began and was saved by that simple word, fiat. It was the command of our Creator, the response of the Mother of Redemption, the prayer of the God-Man who is our Savior. It is the song of the saints, the battle-cry of the Church Militant, and the greatest and most eloquent plea of Man for his own salvation.

© Leticia Austria