Mary's Yes to God

It is Our Lady's Yes to God that is the inspiration and exemplar of our lives! As Hans Urs Von Balthasar says in his beautiful The Threefold Garland:

"Those who have wholly put themselves in the hands of God are also wholly accepted by God and wholly perfected by Him. Mary's total submission was such that, along with her whole sould, she also offered up her whole body, and thuis precisely what God needed in order to realize His plan of salvation. It is just this which is termed Mary's 'anticipated redemption': that already in eternity (when the Son offered Himself to the Father, when the Father accepted His offer and sent Him, and when the Spirit was ready to mediate between heaven and earth) God included Mary's word of assent as an indispensable part of His plan. In order for the Son to be able to take on a genuinely human body, He had for a time to be, inseperably, 'one flesh' with His Mother, but the assumption of this flesh from the Mother's body required nothing less than this word of assent. In a certain sense, within God's plan Mary's word of assent pre-exists even her; to be sure, she will utter it on earth and realize it through her life; but her word of assent will draw her back up into heaven in her totality."