The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, continued...

Meditating today on Mary's Visitation, we are impelled to reflect on [her] courage of the faith. She whom Elizabeth received in her home is the Virgin who "believed" in the Angel's annunciation and responded with faith, accepting with courage the plan of God for her life and thus receiving, in herself, the Eternal Word of the Most High. As my Blessed Predecessor pointed out, in the encyclical "Redemptoris Mater," through the faith that Mary pronounced with her "fiat," "she abandoned herself to God without reservations and 'consecrated herself totally as the Lord's handmaid, in the person and the work of her Son'" (No. 13; cf. "Lumen Gentium" No. 56). Because of this, in her greeting Elizabeth exclaims: "Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled" (Luke 1:45).

Mary truly believed that "with God nothing will be impossible" (v. 37) and, firm in this confidence, she allowed herself to be led by the Holy Spirit in the daily obedience of his plans. How can we not desire to have the same confident abandonment in our life? How can we oppose this happiness born from a profound and intimate familiarity with Jesus? Because of this, addressing ourselves to her "full of grace," we pray that she will obtain for us also, from Divine Providence, the ability to say every day our "yes" to God's plans with the same humble and sincere faith with which she pronounced hers. May she who, receiving in herself the Word of God, abandoned herself to him without reservations, lead us to a more generous and unconditional response to his plans, even when we are called to embrace the cross.

~Pope Benedict XVI, 5/31/11 Meditation at Conclusion of Marian Month

Dear Mary, joyful Handmaid of the Lord, pray for me to grow in confident faith in and generous abandonment to all that your Beloved Son Jesus wills for me.  Through His grace and with your help, may I make your fiat my own.  Amen.