So she DID consent.
An interesting conundrum, as Jehovah had already declared her participation through His angel Gabriel... This is a bare fact, as Dr. Eckleburg had previously pointed out.
One cannot argue other than that which God has declared *will* take place, as He has said that His word does not return to Him empty. One may speculate endlessly from that point forward about which takes precedence, God's will or Mary's (free) will, but it is in fact, a matter of speculation. Mary did submit to Jehovah's will immediately, so by the evidence, God's will did in fact prevail, be it by prescience wrt Mary's disposition, by manipulation of Mary's disposition, or by manipulation of circumstances which influenced her disposition, or by some other means beyond our imaginings. It doesn't matter how, or why- God's will was performed. He is God, and He gets his way.
The only instance I can recall where an active agent of Jehovah's will refused to do His will was in the case of Jonah. His refusal to go to render God's warning to the people of Nineveh, his free will decision to flee from his declared participation in God's will just caused him pain and suffering. His eventual consent, after God manipulated circumstances to effect his decision, was really rather rendered moot, wasn't it?
Now, whether that has direct bearing upon the circumstances involving Mary or not, I would leave to the good sense of the readers, but it would seem to me that once Jehovah has set His mind to do it, it will be done.
A question I would pose to RC generally: Why is Mary is exceptionally venerated when compared to every other agent of God's plan? For instance, shouldn't Jeremiah be exceptionally venerated? It was he that Jehovah declared He knew when he was being knitted in the womb (a very special designation not given to any other)... There is easily as much or more cause for his honor as there is for Mary's.
Why not the Patriarchs and the Prophets whose contributions were all so necessary to bring about the coming of our Lord? Truly, it could be argued that each provided a piece necessary to the whole, even as Mary did. Granted, Mary's participation was of a more personal physical nature, but all of them were deeply altered, all were subjected to pain and ridicule, and many died in the service of our Lord.
There's the old joke about how hard it must have been to be Joseph: However hard he tries, he's never going to be more than #3.
It was he that Jehovah declared He knew when he was being knitted in the womb (a very special designation not given to any other)...
Wow, does THIS ever illustrate the different approaches to Scripture. We think JHVH knows everyone when they are being knitted in the womb. We use that quote as part of our pro-life propaganda.(Not saying this to be contentious, but just to register my surprise and consciousness of a need for further study and dialogue.)
I think, though, it comes down (and this is NOT intended as some kind of argument) to our thinking about the intimate union between Jesus and Mary. Though I can't come up with any right now, some of our writers think that John was blessed just by laying his head on our Lord's bosom. How much more our Lady when He lay His head on hers!
It's not just the "fiat", which viewed in the most minimalistic fashion was the utterance of seconds, but the whole pregnancy, with the mingling of tissue which has been recently determined to take place between mother and intrauterine child. It is the gazing into that face which we long to see. It is all of motherhood.
For us, I'd say, longing to hear the word from the Word is a gift from God, which wars, at least for a while, against our nature. But I'm a daddy, and my child was so sick it looked like she'd never learn to speak. I can tell you I have longed for few things as much as for hearing her say ANYTHING. And the day she said, "I love you, papa," well, when I forget that you can pull the plug. Nobody's home.
Then, let's drop the "immaculata" consideration for a second, to have the natural longing of any mother to hear her child laugh and speak, to see his first smile, to — please think about this — have him run to her and leap into her arms, and to enfold him in her arms -- to have that, and then to go back and recast that sentence with the masculine pronoun capitalized because its antecedent is God the Son of God ...
We venerate her not because of her deeds but because of the great gift God gave her. And again, even if somebody discovered a typo in Ineffe\abilis Deus and they MEANT to say NOT immaculately conceived, (Darn printer got into the communion wine again!), we'd still say the gifts given to her are the greatest ever given to any human, save one.
And then restore, for the sake of discussion only, the immaculate conception, and then Mary is, as I like to say, the first fruits of the second fruits. That is she is what all the elect will be, utterly free of sin, bodily present before the Lord, crowned with a regal crown, gazing raptly and deeply on the face which all of us long to see.
Owing to what we consider to be the HUGE gift of being the mother and, uh, primary care-giver of God the Son of God, we see her as not only "blessed among women" (which is a semitic superlative) but the most blessed of any of us.
Again, not because of what she did, but because of the great things the Lord did for her.
As I say I don't think this forum is much good for persuading, so that is not my intent. I do want to present a comprehensible picture which will enable, for the purpose of understanding only, a "willing suspension of disbelief" just long enough to get the flavor of our thought and piety.
Foreknown does not equal foreordained.
“Why not the Patriarchs and the Prophets whose contributions were all so necessary to bring about the coming of our Lord? Truly, it could be argued that each provided a piece necessary to the whole, even as Mary did. Granted, Mary’s participation was of a more personal physical nature, but all of them were deeply altered, all were subjected to pain and ridicule, and many died in the service of our Lord.”
Perhaps the personal, physical nature of it indeed has something to do with it. The incarnational aspects of Catholicism and Orthodoxy always seem to give Protestants the willies.