The power of saying "yes" to God (What does "Blessed among women" really mean?)

Have you ever noticed how the smallest decisions can change everything? A split-second choice to take a different route home leads to meeting your future spouse. A reluctant "yes" to helping a neighbor results in a lifelong friendship. A simple agreement to fill in for someone at work opens the door to an unexpected career. We often look for life's turning points in grand gestures and dramatic moments, but history—both personal and universal—frequently pivots on a single word spoken in an ordinary moment: "Yes."

When Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, declared to Mary, "Blessed are you among women" (Luke 1:42), she wasn't merely offering a greeting between relatives. She was proclaiming something profound about the nature of spiritual victory—a victory won not through sword or strength, but through surrender and consent. To understand the full weight of Elizabeth's words, we must trace their echo back through the corridors of Israel's history and forward into the cosmic battle between good and evil.

 

Echoes of Ancient Victory

The phrase "blessed among women" appears only two other times in Scripture, and its context is telling.

1. After Jael drove a tent peg through the skull of Sisera, the Canaanite general who had oppressed Israel for twenty years, Deborah sang: "Most blessed of women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent-dwelling women most blessed" (Judges 5:24).

2. Similarly, when Judith returned from beheading Holofernes, the Assyrian general who threatened to destroy Israel, Uzziah proclaimed: "O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all other women on earth" (Judith 13:18).

Notice the pattern: these women are called blessed specifically because they defeated enemies who threatened to destroy God's people. Jael's tent peg ended two decades of oppression. Judith's sword saved her entire nation from annihilation. Both women acted with remarkable courage, taking enormous personal risks to strike down tyrants who seemed invincible.

But here's where the comparison becomes fascinating: Mary never wielded a weapon. She never crept into an enemy's tent or seduced a general to his doom. She simply said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). How does this quiet acceptance in a humble home in Nazareth constitute a victory comparable to—or even greater than—the dramatic triumphs of Jael and Judith?

 

The Ancient Promise

The answer lies in humanity's oldest promise and deepest wound. In Genesis 3:15, immediately after the fall, God speaks to the serpent: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." This first gospel—what theologians call the protoevangelium—promises that a descendant of "the woman" will ultimately defeat the serpent who brought death into the world.

For centuries, this promise hung in the air like an unfulfilled prophecy. Generation after generation passed, and while God raised up deliverers for Israel—judges, kings, prophets—none could address the fundamental problem. They could defeat human enemies, but not the enemy behind all enemies. They could win temporary victories, but not the eternal triumph humanity desperately needed.

St. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, saw in Mary's "yes" the undoing of Eve's "no" to God's will: "The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith" (Against Heresies, 3.22.4). Where Eve's choice brought death, Mary's choice opened the door to life.

 

The Cosmic Battle Revealed

The Book of Revelation pulls back the curtain on the spiritual significance of Mary's fiat (her "yes"). In Chapter 12, John sees "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Revelation 12:1). She is pregnant and crying out in birth pangs. Then appears "a great red dragon" who "stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it" (Revelation 12:4).

The woman gives birth to "a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron" (Revelation 12:5)—clearly a reference to the Messiah. The dragon, identified as "that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan" (Revelation 12:9), fails to destroy the child and turns his rage against the woman and "the rest of her offspring" (Revelation 12:17).

This apocalyptic vision reveals what was really happening in that quiet room in Nazareth. Mary's "yes" wasn't just personal consent to an unexpected pregnancy. It was the beginning of the end for the ancient serpent's dominion over humanity. By agreeing to bear the Messiah, Mary became the woman through whom God would fulfill His first promise of redemption.

St. Augustine captured this beautifully: "Through a woman came death, through a woman came life" (Sermon 232). But unlike Jael and Judith, who brought death to bring life, Mary brought Life itself into the world. Her victory was not in destroying an enemy but in bearing the One who would destroy death itself.

 

The Power of Consent

Here we touch on something profound about the nature of God's interaction with humanity. The all-powerful Creator of the universe, who spoke galaxies into existence, waited for a teenage girl's permission. As St. Bernard of Clairvaux dramatically expressed it: "The whole world waits, prostrate at your feet, for your word of consent" (Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 4.8).

Why? Because God, in His wisdom, chose to make human cooperation essential to His plan of salvation. He could have redeemed the world without Mary's consent, just as He could have created the world without lifting a finger. But He chose not to. He chose to need us, to wait for us, to work through us.

This reveals something beautiful and terrifying about human dignity. Our choices matter—not just for ourselves, but for the entire cosmos. When Mary said "yes," she wasn't just changing her own life; she was changing the trajectory of human history. Her consent became the hinge on which salvation turned.

 

The Daily Battle

But what does this mean for us, living two thousand years later in a world that often seems far removed from cosmic battles between good and evil? (Or, perhaps the cosmic battles seem more intense than ever!). How do we participate in Mary's victory?

The answer is both simple and profound: we are called to echo Mary's "yes" in our own lives. Every day, in countless small ways, God invites us to cooperate with His grace. He asks us to bear Christ into the world—not physically, as Mary did, but spiritually, through our words, actions, and choices.

When we choose forgiveness over revenge, we strike a blow against the ancient serpent who sows discord.

When we speak truth in a world of lies, we participate in the victory of Him who is Truth itself.

When we show mercy to those who don't deserve it, we manifest the God who showed mercy to us when we didn't deserve it.

St. Teresa of Calcutta understood this connection: "Mary's 'yes' to God made the coming of Jesus possible. Our 'yes' to God makes His coming possible today." Every act of love, every choice for good over evil, every moment of surrender to God's will is a participation in Mary's victory.

 

The Challenge of Yes

But let's be honest: saying "yes" to God is often terrifying. Mary's yes meant social shame (pregnancy before marriage), physical danger (the journey to Egypt), and ultimately, standing at the foot of the cross watching her son die. Jael's victory required her to violate the sacred laws of hospitality. Judith's triumph meant risking her life and her purity.

Our "yes" to God will also be costly. It might mean forgiving someone who deeply hurt us. It might mean giving up a comfortable life to serve others. It might mean standing for truth when everyone around us embraces lies. It might mean surrendering our carefully laid plans for an uncertain future that God is calling us toward.

Yet here's the profound truth: every genuine "yes" to God is a victory over the forces of darkness. Every act of obedience, no matter how small it seems, participates in the cosmic triumph that began when Mary said, "Let it be to me according to your word."