Fate brings us choices. Free will chooses. The will is driven by love or hate, and these, in turn, walk together with humility or a lust for power. The will driven by love produces good, and the will driven by hate produces sin. The will of love is Mary; the will of hate is Herodias.
Mary was unmarried when her choice came. Herodias was married, twice and at the same time, when her choice came. It was through a child that the choice of Mary brought life to all men. It was through a child that the choice of Herodias killed a just man, the last of the prophets. Mary was a very young woman, just a girl by today’s standards. Herodias was older, having already lived with Herod’s brother and sired a daughter old enough to give lascivious pleasure. Mary was innocent, a girl by today’s moral standards. Herodias was experienced and tried, a veteran of the sin bin called Rome and an adulteress.
Herodias was an ambitious woman, the contemporary (roughly in time, closely in spirit) of Cleopatra. A married woman, who married her husband’s brother, Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, an auspicious position for a woman. John the Baptist condemned her marriage to Herod and she hated him for it, for power hates nothing more than truth because truth is part and parcel of love. When the unprecedented choice—anything her daughter wanted, up to half of Herod’s kingdom—came, her choice was unhesitating and easy: Tell your step-father that you want the head of John the Baptist, the will of power and hate resulting, as it always does, in death.
By contrast, the working of fate (Providence) with free will, love and humility, is no where better illustrated than in Mary, the Mother of God. To her Gabriel appeared and gave her an unprecedented choice: Will you be the mother of God? Her choice was unhesitating—not because the choice was easy (it wasn’t), but because she was perfectly humble and therefore loving and therefore possessed of a will that would submit to the will of God. She answered “yes,” in those sweet, unassuming words, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” And then her love and humility resulted, as it always does, in life.
(Eric Scheske is the Editor of Gilbert! The Magazine of G.K. Chesterton.)
