Session 1: "Behold, I Am the Handmaid of the Lord" — Mary's Fiat and the Theology of Consent

Session 1 — The Blessed Virgin Mary

"Behold, I Am the Handmaid of the Lord" — Mary's Fiat and the Theology of Consent

Opening Prayer

LEADER: Let us begin by asking the Holy Spirit to be with us tonight.

ALL: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love.

LEADER: Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created.

ALL: And you shall renew the face of the earth.

LEADER: O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful,

ALL: Grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

LEADER: We open tonight with Our Lady’s own words, spoken when the world was changed forever by a single yes:

LEADER: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,"

ALL: "for He has looked with favor on the lowliness of His servant."

LEADER: "Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,"

ALL: "for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His name."

Scripture Assignments

Assign each passage to a woman in the group before beginning.

Passage 1: Luke 1:26-38
Passage 2: Luke 1:46-55
Passage 3: Genesis 3:1-7
Passage 4: Romans 5:18-19

Who Was This Woman?

Before we say anything else about Mary, we have to say this: she was a real young woman, in a real town, in a real moment in history. Not a statue. Not an icon. A girl — probably somewhere between fourteen and sixteen years old — living in Nazareth, a village so small and unremarkable that one of the Apostles would later ask, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

We are tempted, sometimes, to treat Mary as if she were born already crowned. As if her yes to God was simple because she was Mary. But it is the other way around. She is who she is because she said yes. The yes came first.

And the yes was not safe. To say yes to the angel was to risk her engagement to Joseph, her reputation in a community where unmarried pregnancy could mean public shame or worse, her future as she had imagined it. Whatever life Mary had pictured for herself before that moment — quiet, ordinary, faithful — that life ended in the room with Gabriel. What she said yes to was not the version of her life she had been planning. It was a life she had no way of seeing in advance, with consequences she could not yet measure, that would in the end lead her to a Cross.

That is the woman we are sitting with tonight. Not Mary the symbol. Mary the young woman who said yes to something she could not see.

Teaching Block 1 — The Annunciation as Encounter

Then, in the sixth month, the Angel Gabriel was sent by God, to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the name of the virgin was Mary. And upon entering, the Angel said to her: "Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women." And when she had heard this, she was disturbed by his words, and she considered what kind of greeting this might be. And the Angel said to her: "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace with God. Behold, you shall conceive in your womb, and you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name: JESUS. He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. And he will reign in the house of Jacob for eternity. And his kingdom shall have no end." Then Mary said to the Angel, "How shall this be done, since I do not know man?" And in response, the Angel said to her: "The Holy Spirit will pass over you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And because of this also, the Holy One who will be born of you shall be called the Son of God. And behold, your cousin Elizabeth has herself also conceived a son, in her old age. And this is the sixth month for her who is called barren. For no word will be impossible with God." Then Mary said: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word." And the Angel departed from her.
Luke 1:26-38 — CPDV

Read this passage slowly. Notice that the angel does not begin by giving Mary instructions. He begins by telling her who she is.

Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.

Mary is, Luke tells us, perplexed by this greeting. Not by the angel — she has not yet been frightened by his appearance — but by the words. She is troubled by what he calls her. Full of grace. Highly favored. She does not recognize the woman the angel is describing. And so before the angel asks anything of her, he tells her the truth about herself. He tells her that God has already looked on her with favor. The mission comes second. The identity comes first.

This is how God always works. He does not call us out of an idea of who we ought to be. He calls us out of who we already are in His eyes, even when we cannot see it yet. Mary’s fiat — her let it be done unto me — is not the response of a woman straining to be worthy. It is the response of a woman who has just been told that she already is.

There is a lesson here for every woman who has ever felt that she was not enough to be used by God for anything serious. The angel did not come to a queen. He came to a girl in a forgotten village and told her she was loved before he told her she was chosen. That is the order.

Discussion Question 1: When the angel greets Mary, he tells her who she is before he tells her what God wants her to do. What is the difference, in your own life, between trying to earn God’s favor and beginning from a place where you already have it? Where do you tend to live?

Teaching Block 2 — Consent and the Reversal of Eden

The Church has always read Mary’s yes alongside another woman’s choice, much further back. Two women, two moments, two answers to a similar question — what will you do with what God has said?

However, the serpent was more crafty than any of the creatures of the earth that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Why has God instructed you, that you should not eat from every tree of Paradise?" The woman responded to him: "From the fruit of the trees which are in Paradise, we eat. Yet truly, from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of Paradise, God has instructed us that we should not eat, and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we may die." Then the serpent said to the woman: "By no means will you die a death. For God knows that, on whatever day you will eat from it, your eyes will be opened; and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil." And so the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and beautiful to the eyes, and delightful to consider. And she took from its fruit, and she ate. And she gave to her husband, who ate. And the eyes of them both were opened. And when they realized themselves to be naked, they joined together fig leaves and made coverings for themselves.
Genesis 3:1-7 — CPDV

Eve, in the Garden, was offered something. The serpent’s question is one of the most psychologically precise temptations in all of Scripture — did God really say? It is a question that turns God’s word into a suggestion, and turns the woman’s own judgment into the final court. Eve listened. She considered. She took. And in that taking, she said a kind of no — no to trusting God, no to receiving life on the terms God had given it, yes to claiming for herself what could only have been given.

Now read what St. Paul says about what this means.

Therefore, just as through the offense of one, all men fell under condemnation, so also through the justice of one, all men fall under justification unto life. For, just as through the disobedience of one man, many were established as sinners, so also through the obedience of one man, many shall be established as just.
Romans 5:18-19 — CPDV

One man’s disobedience, one Man’s obedience. The Church Fathers — including the men we studied in Wisdom of the Fathers — saw something parallel in the women too. Eve and Mary. One no, and one yes. One taking, and one receiving. What Eve bound by her unbelief, Mary loosed by her faith, writes St. Irenaeus. The whole of salvation history pivots on these two women — not because women are merely instrumental, but because God’s plan for the world hinges on consent. He will not save us against our will. He waits for the fiat.

And what Mary teaches every Christian — man or woman — is that this is what the spiritual life actually is. It is consent. It is receiving what cannot be taken. It is saying, with Mary, let it be done unto me according to your word — and meaning it, even when we do not see what comes next.

Discussion Question 2: Eve took. Mary received. What is the difference, practically, between taking the life you want from God and receiving the life He is giving you? Where in your own life can you feel yourself doing one or the other?

Teaching Block 3 — The Magnificat as a Window Into Mary’s Soul

After the angel left, Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. And when she arrived, the words that came out of her are some of the most theologically dense in all of Scripture.

And Mary said: "My soul magnifies the Lord. And my spirit leaps for joy in God my Saviour. For he has looked with favor on the humility of his handmaid. For behold, from this time, all generations shall call me blessed. For he who is great has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is from generation to generations for those who fear him. He has accomplished powerful deeds with his arm. He has scattered the arrogant in the intentions of their heart. He has deposed the powerful from their seat, and he has exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has taken up his servant Israel, mindful of his mercy, just as he spoke to our fathers: to Abraham and to his offspring forever."
Luke 1:46-55 — CPDV

Read it again. This is not a sweet little hymn. This is a young woman, freshly pregnant under impossible circumstances, who responds to her situation by erupting into a song about God overturning the powerful, scattering the proud, lifting up the lowly, and filling the hungry. The Magnificat is one of the most politically and spiritually radical texts in Scripture, and it comes out of the mouth of a teenage girl.

What this tells us is that Mary’s fiat was not passive. It was not the resignation of a woman with no choices. It was the active, joyful, defiant yes of a woman who already understood that what was happening to her was part of God’s reversal of the whole world — that what looked like her smallness was in fact her exaltation, and what looked like her exaltation was actually the proof that God specializes in the lowly.

There is something here that the Church has never fully exhausted. Mary is at once the most obedient and the most fierce. She is the Handmaid and she is the woman who sings of God scattering the proud. Her humility is not weakness. It is the most powerful posture in the world, because it is the only posture that lets God do what He actually wants to do.

When you say fiat — when you say let it be done — you are not signing away your agency. You are giving God permission to make you the kind of woman who sings the Magnificat.

Discussion Question 3: The Magnificat is sung by a young woman in an almost impossible situation, and what comes out of her mouth is not fear but a song about God lifting up the lowly. What is the difference between a fiat that is resigned and a fiat that is joyful? Have you experienced either in your own life?

This Week

Find one moment this week — it might be small — where you have been taking something from God instead of receiving it. A grasping for control. An anxiety about the future. A demand for a particular outcome. Name it, and try, just once, to say Mary’s words instead: Let it be done unto me according to Your word. Notice what shifts in you when you do.

Closing Prayer

Gather prayer requests and close out.