Humility is a conscious choice to place God’s plans before our own plans. We all possess beauty and love and gifts that are unique to us as individual persons and souls. Humility enables us to slow down, to listen for God, and to contemplate the things that He places on our hearts. This enables us to understand who we are in the eyes of the Lord.

In Mary, the Mother of Jesus and His first disciple, we find humanity’s most profound example of the grace and power of humility.

We know that God is Love; and because we are made in God’s image, we know and believe the Love that God has for us. (1 John 4: 16, Genesis 1: 26-27) We also know that God has a plan for each and every one of our lives — plans to give us a future and hope that covers all things. (Jeremiah 29: 11)

The plan that God had for Mary’s life was extraordinary:

“The Lord created me at the beginning of His work,
the first of His work,
the first of His acts of old.

“Ages ago, I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of
the earth.

“When there were no depths I was
brought forth,
when there were no springs
abounding with water.

“Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth;
before He had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.

“When He established the heavens, I was there,
when He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when He made firm the skies above,
when He established the fountains of the deep,
when He assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress His command,
when He marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside Him, like a master workman;
and I was daily His delight,
rejoicing before Him, always,
rejoicing in His inhabited world
and delighting in the sons of men.”
Proverbs 8: 22-31

The prophet Isaiah revealed one part of Mary’s mission:

“Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.” Isaiah 7: 14

What do we know more broadly about Mary’s life? She is largely an indistinct figure within the Bible. She receives the most mention in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, but there are so many details of Mary’s life that we do not know.

As the human Mother of our Divine Savior, Mary’s mission continues today. Throughout the last 20 centuries, there have been reports of Mary appearing to both children and adults, which again is quite extraordinary. The Catholic Church recorded that her first appearance was to St. James in Spain, around A.D. 40.

No other human in the history of the world has fired the imagination more than Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Mary holds an exalted position even in the Koran, the central religious text of Islam that is believed to be a revelation directly from God. Mary is mentioned 70 times within that text — and she is the only woman mentioned in the Koran.

Through Muslim eyes, Mary is also exceptional. While the Muslim faith does not recognize the Divinity of Jesus, it does recognize the purity of Mary and Jesus both, and the miraculous Virgin conception of Jesus. The Quran 3:42 says, “O Mary, indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds.”

But through Christian eyes, Mary’s choice to place God’s plans before her own enabled Divine Love and Mercy to briefly take human form, offering a path to forgiveness and reconciliation with God the Father.

This Lenten season of reflection on the sacrifice and promise that Jesus offers us can also be a special time to ponder the life, humility and love of Mary, His Mother.

On the one-year anniversary of the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, Saint Pope John Paul II emphasized in his May 13, 1982, address, “Since Mary is the mother of us all, her care for the life of man is universal.”