Most unusually, this prayer started to arrive during the relaxation at the end of my gentle, online movement class last Thursday. All I had to do was to keep repeating the first four lines, so as not to forget them before I could write them down. The rest followed relatively easily:
We are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people” (2 Corinthians 6:16; NIV).
Live with God,
And walk with Him.
Serve with God,
And share with Him:
Share His pity,
Strength and peace,
His light and truth,
Which never cease,
His raging fire,
And tenderness –
For God is love,
So let’s say, “Yes”.
Mary said, “Yes, I am a servant of the Lord; let this happen to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38; NET).
I want your will to be done, not mine (Matthew 26:39; NLT).
References
They will be called ‘children of the living God’ (Romans 9:26; NIV).
Yahweh is tenderness and pity (Psalm 103:8; NJB).
The Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength (Isaiah 26:4; KJV).
The Lord is peace (Judges 6:24; NLT).
God is light (1 John 1:5; NLT).
The Spirit is truth (1 John 5:6; NKJV).
The Lord your God is a raging fire (Deuteronomy 4:24; GW).
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them (1 John 4:16; NLT).
Special note: Saying, “Yes”, to God
Saying, “Yes”, to God, as in today’s prayer, has a long history. It references Mary’s response when the Angel Gabriel asked her to become the mother of Jesus.
In the Latin Vulgate Bible, which dates back to the eight century, we read how Mary give her “fiat“, or “Yes“, to the angel:
Dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla Domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Luke 1:38; Vulgate, my emphasis).
In Latin, the word, “fiat“, means, “Let it be done”, so here is a typical English rendering of this verse:
Then Mary said: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38; CPDV).
However, I prefer the simplicity and absolute directness of the NET translation, which precisely captures the deep, underlying significance of Mary’s fiat:
So Mary said, “Yes, I am a servant of the Lord; let this happen to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38; NET).
All this, and more, lies behind today’s prayer about saying, “Yes“, to God.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the Community of Our Lady of Walsingham, for introducing me to the concept of saying, “Yes”, to God, and to the existence of fiat rosaries. Here is a link to their website: walsinghamcommunity.org.
Thank you, also, to Blue Letter Bible, without whose parallel translations, including the Vulgate, I couldn’t run this blog. Here is a link to their website: blueletterbible.org.
I owe further thanks to the Catholic Diocese of Arlington for helping me to explore the origin and significance of the word “fiat“. For those who want to know more, here is a link to their website: arlingtondiocese.org.
The Rosary Hospital
Finally, here is a picture of my shrine, with my fiat rosary in the foreground:
