“And Mary said, ‘See, the maidservant of the Lord; may it happen to me as you have said.”
— Luke 1:38
Many ancient Christian writers likened Christian education to an ascent up a mountain. High, steep, and often difficult, God leads up the mountain at times by way of switchbacks. Turning around on a switchback is still progress but now progress in a new direction. It’s hard to imagine a more jarring “new direction” than the one laid before Mary in this angelic encounter: a young Jewish maiden intent on a very ordinary marriage and a very ordinary life now hears the call to be the virgin mother of God. And her response is extraordinarily instructive for us.
Commenting on it in the fourth century, Ambrose of Milan notes: “Behold now the humility, the devotion of the virgin… She, who is chosen to be His mother, calls herself His handmaid, so far was she from being exalted by the sudden promise.” Mary was not filled with pride as if deluded that God had chosen her for her greatness. Quite the opposite, she was humbled by the fact that God had called her—so ordinary—to such a great thing.
“At the same time,” Ambrose continues, “by calling herself handmaid, she claimed to herself no other prerogative of such great grace than that she might do what was commanded her.” In her humility she recognized how small she was in comparison to what God had called her; in her piety she claimed the grace that God would give her to fulfill that calling. It is precisely this combination of humility and dependence on God’s grace that allows for magnanimous obedience.
Theological education in our time and place feels a high goal indeed; the road is steep and often difficult. We know that well at YTI. But we know, as the angel announced to Mary, that “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:36), and so in humility we extend ourselves to this great calling.