The adherent
Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.
Blessed: the Holy Spirit uses Elizabeth’s voice to announce to the world who Mary is. The Spirit calls Mary blessed, greek makarìa. The greek adjective makàrios, “supplied with goods, lucky, favored, privileged, happy”, comes from the verb makarìzo, “admire, beatify, well ventured”. The foundation of the term comes from the akkadian magaru, “grant favors, be consenting”. It originates from the root mak-, most likely linked with màkros, “long” – from the root, mah-, “giant, great, exalted”– and mègas, “great, extended, vast, high, strong, powerful, magnificent, wonderful, prodigious”.
You who believed: it is the greek aorist participle of the verb pistèuo, “I believe, I adhere”, it’s the skin to flesh adherence.
Fulfilled: literally the noun telèiosis, “fulfillment”, means: “what has reached its wholeness; accomplished, ripe, complete, perfect”. The greek tèlos, “extremity; final time”, designates the conversion point of a horserace or of plowing, it’s the turning point at the end of the race or of a groove. At the root of this word lies the meaning of “being, existing”. The numeric tilla, indeed, (from which the greek tèlos), has as its root til- which means “being”, “being in existence”.
What was spoken, literally: of the things said. It’s the perfect past participle of the greek verb lalèo, onomatopoeic verb that means: “chat, talk, converse, speak, not be able to shut”. It’s the chatty, the talkative, the one who sings jingles. From the akkadian alalu, from which the semitic allèl, from which the hebrew hillèl, “sing, praise, pray, talk in a unintelligible way”. It’s a verb linked to childhood: the akkadian base la’u means “child, baby, the one who suckle”.
The Lord: “Lord” is the translation of Yahweh o YHWH, holy Tetragrammaton, the loving name of God, known to Israel since thousands of years, but never spoken by the Hebrews, since four hundreds of years before Christ’s birth until nowdays, because too beautiful and too great, it’s sung in every page of the bible. With the divine motherhood of Mary, the unpronounceable Yahweh, the Lord, shortened in Yah-Yeh, and joined to Yshua, which means “salvation”, becomes Yeshùa, “God saves”. In english Jesus.
Mary was proclaimed, not by Elizabeth, but by the Holy Paraclete Spirit God, the one who believed. According to the greek etimology, that word means the one who adhered, the one who adhered completely and perfectly to God and His Word, as in the body the skin adhere to the flesh, as the oil to the head, as the sound to the ear. Mary’s believing is not only believing in God, but adhering to Him totally and utterly, without doubts and without never ever thinking ill of Him.
The opposite of believing then, the opposite of the intellectual and spiritual activity of Mary, truly, it’s not simply not believing in God, but, more often, it’s believing in him without really perfectly adhering to him, remaining detached from him, rebelling against him.
Our sweetest Mother Mary, the one perfectly and joyfully adherent to God, with the power of her love, ceaselessly intercedes with the Paraclete Spirit to help us grow in the faith, the true faith, so that our adherence to God might be without reservations, stable, serene, unassuming, without reluctances, hesitations, rebellions, revolts, questions, doubts. Only this kind of faith can open to us the ways of joy and love.