willing to offer herself to be the instrument of the will of God. No
doubt that was an habitual attitude and not one taken up on the spur of
the moment. It is indeed very rarely that what seem spontaneous actions
are really such; and S. Mary's first word was nearer spontaneity than
the second. Her exclamation in answer to the angelic _Ave_ was the
natural expression of her surprise at so unexpected a message: its
variance from all her thought about her life was the thing that struck
her; and therefore her instinctive, "How can this be?"

In this second word we have a quite different attitude. Here is
revealed to us the profound and perfect humility of the Blessed Virgin.
This answer comes from the experience of her whole life. It is of such
utterances that we say that they are revealing. What we at any time say,
does in fact reveal what we are--what we have come to be through the
experience of our past life. And no doubt it is these instinctive
utterances which are called out by some unexpected occurrence that
reveal more of us than our weighed and guarded words. Back of every word
we utter is a life we have lived. We have been spending years in
preparing for that word. Perhaps when the time comes to speak it, it is
not the word we thought we were going to speak, it was not the prelude
to the action we thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a
character other than the character that we thought we had. How often the
Gospel brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with
his brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal life; and
then we see him going away when the testing of our Lord demonstrated
that he only partly meant what he said. It was not S. Peter's brave
words, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee," that
revealed the truth about the Apostle; but the words that were called out
by the accusation that he was of the company of Jesus: "Then began he to
curse and swear, saying, I know not the man." We have no doubt that he