{"id":1263,"date":"2015-03-26T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2015-03-26T07:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/saying-yes\/"},"modified":"2015-03-26T03:00:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T07:00:09","slug":"saying-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/saying-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying Yes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Melodious Monk<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, we celebrated the feast of the Annunciation, a feast that once again comes wholly unexpected at this time of year.\u00a0 In reading the story again, I\u2019m struck by two things.\u00a0 Firstly, this visit from the angel on this March day, not Christmas, is the moment that God entered our world in the flesh; and secondly, on this day that Mary made her famous &#8220;fiat&#8221; &#8212; but she could have said no.\u00a0\u00a0While I easily glide over both these events, hardly thinking more than, &#8220;of course that happened, the angel came and Mary agreed, and that\u2019s wonderful and amazing and we love her for it!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But I would do well to take a moment this week to ponder the amazing and multi-layered spiritual events that happened on this day.\u00a0 In his book on saints,\u00a0Father Alban Butler\u00a0said this about the feast day: <em>\u201cThe world, as heaven had decreed, was not to have a Savior till she had given her consent to the angel&#8217;s proposal; she gives it, and behold the power and efficacy of her submissive fiat!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I see in this statement God giving Mary (and I believe all of us) a <em>choice<\/em> to say yes.\u00a0 Not a one time offer, but daily, even many times a day we are given \u201cangels\u2019 proposal\u2019s\u201d or choices.\u00a0 I tend to forget that in all situations, I have a choice for or against God.\u00a0 On this feast, Mary\u2019s example reminds us that the Savior will come readily after we say yes.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-4567571\" src=\"http:\/\/of.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/angel1.jpg\" alt=\"The Community of Jesus\" width=\"142\" height=\"207\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheCommunityOfJesus\/~4\/-B8t-_VBE-4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Melodious Monk Yesterday, we celebrated the feast of the Annunciation, a feast that once again comes wholly unexpected at this time of year.\u00a0 In reading the story again, I\u2019m struck by two things.\u00a0 Firstly, this visit from the angel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/saying-yes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}