We probably all know someone who just can't say no. We may try to teach our overextended friends how to refuse a request to get involved in yet another project, but saying no is a hard task for them. For people of faith, saying yes can be just as hard.
Yes to God, that is. Today, the Feast of the Annunciation, we remember the example of a young woman answering a fateful yes to God. A Jewish teenager named Mary encounters the angel Gabriel. She is already betrothed to Joseph, but she finds herself freely agreeing to be the mother of Jesus, the son of God. Mary risks scandal and ostracism and even stoning; still, she says yes. She goes along with her perception of God's will for her life. It turns out to be a remarkably arduous life, since she is present for her son's crucifixion and death. For her acquiescence to God's calling, she is remembered as the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, a holy woman among holies.
Despite what some folks believe, we Catholics do not worship Mary as a goddess or as any kind of divine-adjacent being. We can pray for her intercession in our lives, as we may do with all the saints, but we understand that she was, like us, a human being. I recently heard a Catholic bishop explain that Mary was only able to say that yes because of God's gift of grace: When we pray the Hail Mary, after all, we address Mary as "full of grace." We too are going to need God's grace if we are to say yes to God.
The way we in modern times say yes to God looks different from Mary's yes. Mary's call to be the mother of God is known the world over as The Annunciation. Our call is not likely to be as dramatic. We don't usually entertain angels in our homes; nor do we receive specific messages from these visitors. Instead, we may feel a tiny insistent nagging in our souls to do something we would not normally do. We may experience God's nudge only as the "still small voice" that the prophet Elijah describes hearing (1 Kings 19:12).
That quiet word from God is powerful. It is the motivator that sends some of us to feed people whose towns have been destroyed by a natural disaster or a man-made war. It finds some of us visiting prisoners or building houses or counseling teenagers or driving elders to the doctor or fundraising for charities or fostering stray animals or running 12-step groups. It draws some of us to start petitions or organize labor unions, to go to law school or run for office.
Many of the people I know who do these brave and impactful things tell me that they find themselves in places they never thought they'd go, committed to causes they never pictured themselves championing, but here they are because of some indefinable moment of clarity. One of the results of saying yes to God is that we are pushed out of our comfortable complacency and into the kind of grace that stretches our minds and expands our hearts. We grow in compassion and empathy. Saying yes to God can be dangerous to our preconceptions and surmises.
When we follow Jesus, or when we say we follow Jesus, we are expected to follow him into trouble and out onto the margins of society. Mary's example shows us that a consistent prayer life will help us hear more clearly and say yes more swiftly, despite the risks. Saying yes to God may cause us to lose friends or fall from our social status or deplete our savings account. But saying no to God is corrosive to the soul. The friend who can't say no to God embodies a palpable faith. We are all better for such friends.
Email contributing columnist Valerie Schultz at vschultz22@gmail.com. The views expressed here are her own.
