Mary’s Fiat: The Choice of True Freedom

“The mark of man is initiative, but the mark of woman is cooperation. Man talks about freedom; woman about sympathy, love, sacrifice. Man cooperates with nature; woman cooperates with God. Man was called to till the earth, to “rule over the earth”; woman to be the bearer of a life that comes from God.”
— Fulton Sheen’s The World’s First Love 

Catholics for Choice, an organization founded by Frances Kissling, a former abortion clinic operator (and someone who did not deem herself a Catholic), has been in the business of scandal since its inception in 1973. And sadly, the start of Advent only provided them with further opportunity for heinous behavior. December commenced with Catholics for Choice promoting the blasphemous statement that “This holiday season, remember that Mary had a choice, and you should too.”

Met immediately with backlash, the nefarious “typers” behind the account dug their heels in and added: “When the Angel Gabriel approached Mary, he offered her the gift of choice to say, ‘Let it be so.’ We all deserve this same dignity and autonomy over our own bodies.”

What makes these statements especially disgusting is the unabashed perversion of Our Lady’s Fiat. Her attitude of complete surrender—of “Thy will be done”—is turned on its head. 

Shamelessly, this group uses the Annunciation as a devious way to promote abortion. But Mary’s will is in complete union with God. Her choice is God’s will. Her entire attitude is one of submission to God. For all of time, God had chosen Our Lady to be the Mother of God, and these absurd tweets deny this reality. 

For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary” (CCC 488)

Fulton Sheen unpacks the colossal beauty and profundity of Mary as Mother in his book The World’s First Love. “Every great love is a dream come true,” he writes. We all have an image of what love looks like, and thus when we encounter it, it isn’t so much love at first sight but rather at “second sight.” Yet, God, preexisting all of creation, preexisting all mothers, could make His own mother. And who wouldn’t make their mother to be the most beautiful, loving, perfect woman to ever exist? “He [God] thought of her long, long before she was a dream.” Mary, Immaculately Conceived, “existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers—she is the world’s first love.”

Mary was predestined to be the Mother of God.

What Catholics for Choice is promoting is the antithesis of Our Lady, the attitude of “I will not serve” the “non servium” of Satan. Thus strangling the ennobling and freeing words of Mother Mary into the empty narcissism of the demonic. An attitude that Mary stands in direct opposition to—the attitude of one she is destined to crush. 

So much of the language surrounding the pro-choice movement is tethered to the concept that women deserve motherhood on their terms. It entices us with the idea that we can be like God and dictate life. It proclaims that having this sort of “right to slaughter” dignifies women. Ultimately, it denies motherhood because it is disgusted by the cross that is woven into the maternal. It is a mentality that whatever is displeasing or challenging to us is worth exterminating.   So much of the language surrounding the pro-choice movement is tethered to the concept that women deserve motherhood on their terms.Tweet This

To attach this attitude to the Blessed Mother is an unspeakably evil attack because Our Lady’s fiat wasn’t just a yes to allowing Christ to secretly dwell within her, it was also a yes to His death on the cross. It was a yes to having her heart pierced by a sword seven times. It was a yes to Cavalry. It was a yes to looking evil in the eye and suffering alongside her Son, Our King and Savior. It was consent to become Mater Dolorosa. 

She didn’t put forth any terms; she collaborated with the will of God in total love. 

As Caryll Houselander writes: 

It is always a love story, a culmination of love between the Spirit of Light and the Bride of the Spirit. This is something which can happen to everyone now, but it could not have happened to anyone but for the fiat of the peasant girl in Nazareth whom the whole world calls Our Lady. It is in Our Lady that God fell in love with Humanity.

The Blessed Mother’s fiat is one of holy receptivity. It is a mirror of God’s love, offering up His son for us. Mary, too, offers up all that she has and is to God. It is not a “this is my body and my choice,” but this is my body, offered for love of You. She invites Christ in. As we, too, are called to invite Christ in. 

As we progress forth in this Advent season, let us contemplate the World’s First Love and stand against such hideous slurs attacking the one who brought Christ into this world.  

Let us pray in reparation as we, too, attempt to imitate Our Lady and be a dwelling place for Christ Our King. 

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. 

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord: Be it done unto me according to Thy word.”