Br. Bradley Thomas Elliott, OP

This season we celebrated the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, when we as Christians remember and extoll the great mercy of our Lord who, in creating His own mother in the womb of St. Anne, bestowed upon her the singular gift of being preserved from the stain of original sin from the moment of her conception. As we approach the Solemnity of the Nativity, the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary becomes a prominent highlight of our devotional lives. Although many Catholics have been familiar with these devotions from childhood, I, having come to the Church in adulthood, have not always found it inspiring or even agreeable. When I was a new Catholic and devotion to the Virgin Mary was first introduced to me, I was told that she is celebrated as the “model Christian”, the perfect example of a holy and obedient life. How could a virginal young woman living two thousand years ago serve as a model? This seemed like nothing more than mere sentimentality. Over the last few weeks I have been, once again, through the Church’s liturgical cycles, pushed to reflect on why the Blessed Virgin Mary is now so important to my spirituality. 

At the Annunciation, through the angel Gabriel as His messenger, the God of Israel came to the Virgin Mary and proposed that she be the mother of the Messiah. At her “yes”, her “fiat”, the second person of God, God the Son, became incarnate in her womb. From that moment on the Virgin Mary was a temple of God, a walking tabernacle within which the God of Israel dwelt with His people. The Eternal word of God who was with God from the beginning, God from God and light from light, took flesh in her womb and became one of us. Through the “yes” of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Eternal God would now take up a human nature and, from that moment on, be united with mankind in a union beyond the imagination of even the prophets. The Son of God would work with a human nature, act with a human nature, speak with a human nature, and ultimately redeem humanity through that same human nature. It was the “yes” of the Virgin Mary that opened the door and became the gate through which God Himself would enter the world. She submitted her entire being to the will of God to such a degree that, through her very body, God would now be one with His people.

The Virgin Mary was so docile to the Holy Spirit that she became, as the tradition of the Christian East claims, the “God Bearer”, or “Theotokos”. It is in this way that she becomes the ideal model of every Christian. What else could be meant by being a Christian than this, to be so open and united to the will of God that that very will is expressed in everything we do; to be so united with Jesus that we also become like walking tabernacles of Him, carrying His love to all that we meet? Like the Virgin Mary, through our “yes” to God, we ought to become so docile before His will that our own human natures become new vehicles by which He carries out His saving plan on earth. Like a pencil in the hand of a master poet that becomes the instrument by which he writes, our Master Poet ought to be God the Father, and our very lives be His instruments by which He continues to write the great epic of Salvation History.

It was St. Dominic’s great hope that the Order of Preachers be always under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By entering into the true spirituality of his season of Advent, I am becoming increasingly more aware our need to imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary in her complete “yes” to God the Father. My prayer is that all of my Brother Dominicans and I will become more and more a symbol and reflection of that imitation to the World. By being imitators of Mary we will be imitators of Christ.