Losing our soul (life) for the sake of Jesus and the Annunciation
“Whoever wants to save his soul will lose it, but whoever loses his soul for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it!” This is essential – to lose your soul for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s. An example for us to follow is the Blessed Virgin who said at the moment of the Annunciation: “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”
When the Blessed Virgin said: “I am the bondslave of the Lord!”, the Spirit of God descended on her. How will an impossible thing become possible? The Holy Spirit will do it. Through the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Spirit, Jesus wants to live in us. How? He wants us to surrender our will to Him in all things. He wants us to give Him our all. He wants us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength. The essential thing needed to allow God to live in us, to allow Jesus to be incarnate in us, is the obedience of Mary: “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord!” So we need to give our all to God like the Blessed Virgin. We need to surrender our will to Him: “Although I do not understand, I want to serve You, Lord!”
The Holy Spirit will then give us the light and strength, so that we may allow Jesus to live in us and enter into the death of Christ again and again. We are infected with sin, with the poison of original sin which works in us through lies. Therefore we need the light of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, while the devil is the spirit of lies. The Holy Spirit gives us the strength to do the will of God.
The Annunciation brings us into a mystery. A mystery is to be received by faith and then God will enlighten us. It is the greatest miracle in the history of mankind – God assumes a human nature. God becomes man through the faith of the Blessed Virgin, through her YES. She said her YES to God and the Word became flesh. God waited for Mary to say her YES to Him. And He also waits for us to say our YES to Him in little things and to accept our small crosses and unite them with Christ. We should endure suffering like she did. She knew from the Scripture and the Prophets that Jesus would be the Man of Sorrows, covered with spittle, degraded, and yet she said: Behold, the bondslave of the Lord!
We can see the Blessed Virgin standing by the cross and believing that Christ would be raised. When no one believed, she did. In our life too, we should persevere in faith and live by faith and not believe lies or nonsense. We must receive the Word of God and believe in it. And when a lie attacks us, let us defend ourselves with the sword of faith – because this is a spiritual battle.
The programme of the Blessed Virgin is also a programme for us. Saint Augustine says: “God became man so that man might become God” – through the Blessed Virgin and her faith. Jesus says to you at Calvary: “Behold, your Mother!” We should receive her programme too – be slaves of the Lord. Therein lies the reform of the Church – every woman must be a slave of the Lord and not like Eve. But this involves a cross. It means to stand by the cross like the Blessed Virgin. My every YES is intertwined with a cross, but this is the very source of a blessing.
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