It is to the Ever-Virgin that the Archangel Gabriel announces the coming of Our Lord first and she returns praises to God with the Church's glorious hymn known as the Magnificat. It is not just the Ever-Virgin that is able to return this prayer but the Church who returns this prayer for the Church is the very expression of Our Lady the Theotokos. It is in the liturgy that we come to realize our full expression of the Blessed Ever-Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. In the liturgy, we too, are pregnant with God in anticipation of His Second Coming, His coming into us through the Eucharist. We are standing with Him at the foot of the Cross. Many people want to make of the Church a more masculine place of worship nowadays but the Church, in its essence is feminine. Very feminine. It is the expressed image of Our Lady. And like Our Lady, "Holy Mother Church never has the intention of 'knowing a man', that is treating the liturgy as a 'choice' made by partners in family planning" (Noble Beauty, 56). We have no intention of knowing this "liturgy of choice" that the Novus Ordo has effectively become throughout the entirety of Western worship. We fully submit to being in the likeness of the Ever-Virgin who carries Our Lord in her womb willingly and allows the will of God to be done according to His Own, not to hers. We are turned toward God in the liturgy, not towards each other. The focus is on God and when the focus is on God, we are honoring Our Lady in the truest sense. Muhammadans may have a devotion to Our Lady but they fail to render her honor as they refuse to acknowledge her Son as Our Lord.
Like the Blessed Virgin, we join into the suffering of divine things. "The Blessed Virgin exemplifies this suffering of divine things. She lets them happen to her, she accepts, she receives, embraces, and this is why she becomes pregnant with God." (57) It is not just in her womb where she carries Our Lord but afterward, she joins Him in His ministry at the wedding of Cana where she presents intercession on behalf of those who were without wine, she joins Him at the Cross where a sword likewise pierces her soul, and she subjects herself to death even though without sin, she was not subject to it, so that she can enter into His Resurrection. The Church's life is Marian because the Church's prayer is Marian. We offer ourselves according to the Will of God, not according to our heart's content, for often our fallen hearts know more what is wrong than what is right. It is when we conform to the image of Our Lady that we soon find the Novus Ordo in direct contradiction to this. The Novus Ordo, as discussed in the last section, entertains a voluntary characteristic. It is true that Our Lady voluntarily submitted herself to God but in doing so, she said, "be it done according to thy Word." She did not allow her will to take over when she surrendered it to Our Lord. The Novus Ordo is in a situation where it has refused to surrender its will over to Our Lord's. It turns its will toward itself. Many times, looking at a priest face-to-face in a liturgy is distracting and brings more attention to the priest and the parishioners than it does toward God.
Kwasniewski notes, "It is the very inflexibility of traditional liturgical forms that gives them their indomitable power to shape us, to change us, to be our fixed reference point, to be the rock on which the anchor of our restless hearts can catch hold." (61) How are we being shaped if we are free to shape what is meant to shape us? Prayer is not about changing others or the Will of God. It is about changing our wills to the Will of God. It is about entering into the life of God. This is the way the Ever-Virgin lived. She always had the Eucharist in her mouth. She was always turned toward God. She was always facing God. One of things I admire about Crazy Church Lady, my godmother, is that she is always turned Eastward, toward God. She looks toward Christ. Jesus alone is her King, Jesus alone is her Lord. She desires her children to have the same attitude. When her little one expressed she loved Jesus more than her mommy and daddy, my godmother expressed that this is exactly what we desire for this little one. The Ever-Virgin is constantly interceding for us in the presence of God and the Liturgy is offered for those who are in desperate need of the intercession of Our Lady. We pray in the East that God remember all men and women. One can be certain that the Ever-Virgin prays for all men and women too. Like my godmother, Our Lady is always turned Eastward.
"[The Virgin Mary] was ad orientem through and through. In our interior attitude towards liturgy, in our actual practice of worship, and in the ordering of our lives, we should imitate and internalize this theocentrict and Christocentric orientation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." (67)
In all of our ecclesiastical life, we are to imitate Our Lady. Our Lady is the New Jerusalem. Our Lady is the City of God. Our Lady is the Bride of Christ. All of those things, the Church is too. The Church is the New Jerusalem. The Church is the City of God. The Church is the Bride of Christ. Our Lady possessed the Eucharist always in her mouth and so too, the Church possesses the Eucharist always in its tabernacles. The Church is facing Eastward, at the foot of the cross, suffering along with Christ, pregnant with God Himself and all of His riches.
"Our Blessed Lady shows us the best way, the true way, the holy way. It begins with 'Be it done to me according to Thy Word,' culminates in her adoring and co-redemptive silence at the foot of the Cross, lingers lovingly in her life of Eucharistic communion, and finds completion in her glorious assumption where she─the very personification of the heavenly Jerusalem and its ineffable liturgy─is taken up by the hand of her Son and led into His eternal wedding feast." (87)
Let it be done to me, according to thy will.
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