23
obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her
faith.” 83 Mary was faithful to the end and beyond, serving not only the mystery of creation in the
Incarnation, but also, as the Church states, “[devoting] herself totally … to the person and work
of her Son, under and with him” in his role as Savior. 84 In response to God’s self-revelation and
invitation to union with him, she opened her sealed fountain, her enclosed garden, and became
herself that earthly paradise where man shares in the free, total, faithful and fruitful life of God in
Christ.
It is again within the enclosure of a garden that Christ began his Passion, where Jesus
spoke His own fiat in accordance with the will of the Father. In Gethsemane, Jesus prostrated
himself before God in a position for prayer, “which [expressed] obedience to the Father’s will,
an abandonment of self with complete trust in him,” as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI asserts. 85
Elsewhere, the Holy Father teaches that Jesus’ self-donation was unconditional—involving his
total person—an offering of “complete openness” and service, indeed the very existence of
service itself. 86 His offering was not only free and total, but also faithful, grounded as it was in
his trust in a Father for whom everything is possible. 87 The Holy Father explains the import for
man’s ultimate fulfilment in the garden of Gethsemane, where
83
Paul VI, Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church], Vatican.va, November 21, 1964, sec.
56, accessed May 27, 2018, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii _ vatican_council/documents/vat-
ii_const_ 19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
84
Ibid.
85
Benedict XVI, “General Audience,” Vatican.va, February 1, 2012, para. 10, accessed April 15, 2018,
https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2012/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20120201.html.
86
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,1990),
210.
87
Mark 14:36.