"To surrender all that we are, as we are..."

"Be it done to me according to thy word."  ~Luke 1:38

"We are all asked if we will surrender what we are, our humanity, our flesh and blood, to the Holy Spirit and allow Christ to fill the emptiness formed by the particular shape of our life.

"The surrender that is asked of us includes complete and absolute trust; it must be like Our Lady's surrender, without condition and without reservation.

"We shall not be asked to do more than the Mother of God; we shall not be asked to become extraordinary or set apart or to make a hard and fast rule of life or to compile a manual of mortifications or heroic resolutions; we shall not be asked to cultivate our souls like rare hot-house flowers; we shall not, most of us, even be allowed to do that.

"What we shall be asked is to give our flesh and blood, our daily life -- our thoughts, our service to one another, our affections and loves, our words, our intellect, our waking, working, and sleeping, our ordinary human joys and sorrows -- to God.

"To surrender all that we are, as we are, to the Spirit of Love in order that our lives my bear Christ into the world -- that is what we shall be asked.

"Our Lady has made this possible.  Her fiat was for herself and for us, but if we want God's will to be completed in us as it is in her, we must echo her fiat."

~Caryll Houselander in The Reed of God

Ave Maria! Mother of our Lord, let me echo your fiat that I may bear Christ into the world.