Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Today we celebrate Our Lady of the Rosary, a feast that honors the mother of Jesus even as it invites us to meditate on the mysteries of the life of her son. It is a feast that honors the mother of Jesus in a special way because she was deemed worthy to share in those mysteries of her son. While the recitation of the rosary is not a prayer addressed to Mary (for all prayer is addressed to God), her closeness to her son makes the rosary an effective way of asking for her intercessions. The rosary is a meditation on the life of Jesus Christ. However, it is also clear that Jesus’ mother features immensely in the meditation. This is clearly seen not only in some of the mysteries of the rosary but also in the prayer most repeated in the recitation of the rosary: the Hail Mary. It is a prayer that pays homage to Mary, a prayer whose origin is the content of our Gospel reading today. The Gospel passage for today’s feast is the visitation of Mary by the angel Gabriel. The angel hails Mary as ‘blessed,’ a greeting that surprises even Mary herself because of its unusualness. In what sense was Mary blessed? She was not from a noble background, and she was but a mere teenager. There weren’t many achievements that could be credited to her yet. How could she be blessed? What was the reason for the angel calling her blessed? She wanted to know. In his response, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she is blessed – not because of anything she had done – but because the Lord had favored her (the favor of the Lord rested upon her). Mary was worthy of the Lord’s favor because the Lord had singled her out for an unrepeatable task: bringing forth into the world the author of salvation. And the Lord was proven right in selecting Mary for such a noble responsibility. For while Mary might not have been any different from girls her own age, she demonstrated her being special in her openness to the Lord’s promptings. She was at liberty to say no to what angel Gabriel was proposing especially after learning what saying yes entailed. But she chose to trust in the Word of the Lord. Mary was favored by the Lord because of her openness to cooperate with the Lord. ‘I am your handmaid, may it be done unto me according to your will,’ she had said.