Good news? To a young woman - still hardly more than a girl - who's been looking forward to her wedding to the carpenter? A mixed blessing, at best, you'd have to say.
But after the initial shock, Mary's response is simple: "I am the Lord's servant. Let it be to me as you have said."
There's a long way ahead - the fears of childbirth in a strange place, the eccentric son with odd twists on old rules; the fears as he criss-crossed the Levant, preaching a revolutionary message. Being ignored, the confrontations, the arrest, the Cross - the sword that pierced her own heart, even as it pierced his. All that to live through before she saw her risen Son and received his Spirit.
She knew what it is to wait through darkness, to wonder what the meaning is, to know despair - but came through to another day, when the young women ran back from the tomb with a message nobody could quite believe or make out. She knew what it meant to try to pluck meaning from chaos.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.
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