The Annunciation - Humility

 

The Joyful Mysteries

The Annunciation

Fruit of the Mystery: Humility

In Luke 1:26-38, we see the angel Gabriel visiting the young virgin Mary to tell her that she is to be the mother of God’s son through the power of the Holy Spirit. Mary gives her fiat, “May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) and the world is changed forever.

Humility is the opposite of pride, that sin that makes us think that we are better than others and that we know best how things should be done. Pride can even lead us to believe that we know better than God (this is true whenever we choose sin over following God’s commandments).

Humility is seeing ourselves as God sees us, with both our gifts and our shortcomings. It allows us to put down our pride. With humility, we acknowledge that all good gifts in our life come from God and that God knows what is best for us. Humility allows us to be obedient to God, even when it is hard. Humility also invites us to see all people we encounter as fellow children of God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. It challenges us to think more about others than about ourselves.

Being humble means to submit to the will of God for our lives. At the Annunciation, Mary offers the perfect example of this. She was a young, engaged woman with plans and dreams for her future. Yet, in a moment, all her plans and dreams were changed. God had other, much bigger, plans for her, and she willingly accepted them even though she must have been scared. She was a young Jewish girl who knew that being unwed and pregnant could result in being stoned to death. Still, she trusted. She obeyed. She said yes.

In meditating on this mystery of The Annunciation, let us pray that we may have the humility to accept God’s will for our lives.

 

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