Merciful Father, as you have sent the Holy Spirit on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, to write all that You wished and wanted, we pray You, send the same Holy Spirit on us, so that we may understand, appreciate Your Word, and make it our plan of life. This we ask for the merits of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
53 … It is meet and right that we should speak about the ‘prodigy’ of grace, about the ‘real things’ (Lk.1, 49), because it is Mary, the Immaculate, who is solely and totally God’s. It is wise and true to say that when ‘She was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, she understood, sensed the whole truth’ (Jn.16, 13). The Church then could gradually come to understand the Old Testament, the ‘fullness of grace’ with which Mary was endowed from the moment of Her Conception.
The New Testament The text which proves this truth is found in the ‘Salutation of Gabriel’ to Mary:
“Hail, full of grace.” (Lk.1,28)
This is an exceptional, extraordinary meeting, occasion! The Angel must have been conscious that he was passing on a unique message in the whole History of Humanity!
The message did not stop short of a simple Salutation, “Hail, Mary.” No, the real impact, was still to come, and the Messenger added the most important words of the message: “Full of grace”. The Angel Gabriel is, in actual fact telling us: “Look this is the new name of this maiden, her name, now, is: ‘Full of grace’”. Here is a new person. Here, this instant, we have a new and wider dimension of the maiden’s personality. This Mary, is NOW a new Mary, she is not the same maiden of a few minutes ago. This is how God is looking at this maiden, Mary, from now on.
This is a very important message to us all who declare that we believe in God , The most important thing in life is that we do our utmost (with Prayer and Grace) to see to it that we fit hundred per cent the image that God would like us to be.This is rather difficult to explain …. and to understand. I mean God has got the ‘blue-print’ of me, Tony. He has the master plan of Tony and how He would like Tony to be to be acceptable to enter into His presence. HE has helped me to fit that plan, by sending His beloved Son to earth to redeeming me and help me ‘make it’. Jesus left the Apostles and the Church to help me ‘make it’, so that with all the help I should manage to be an exact photo copy of the master plan of Tony, the master-plan drawn up by the Creator Himself.
Mary has managed and fitted according to Her Creator’s plan. But, this happened as she was always a soul close to God, in prayer, in meditation of the Scripture, in her duties and her life in general. Above all, she was the chosen one of God.
It shows to a great degree, the depth of this maiden’s personality, which has been completely changed. The Lord has looked upon Her ‘lowliness’ and ‘has done great things with her.’ The maiden of Nazareth has been now, re-moulded, and humanly speaking the main ingredient, feature, of the re-moulding is Grace; a strong amount of graces, she has become God’s joy, and made more worthy, completely worthy, to look upon. She has become completely worthy of Her Creator. /54
Certain Information taken, with kind permission, from the book “Who is Mary” by H.G.Mons. Sylvester Magro ofm, Bishop of Benghazi. A very dear friend.
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