Nazareth was a small town tucked against the hills of Galilee. It had houses of pale stone, narrow lanes, and a well where the women filled their jars early in the morning. There was no palace there, no soldiers, no important people passing through. It was an ordinary place, the kind you walk through without noticing anything at all.

In one of those houses lived a young woman named Mary. She was promised in marriage to Joseph, a carpenter of the family of King David, and her days were like the days of every other young woman in Nazareth. She ground the wheat, mended the clothes, and prayed softly when the sun went down behind the hills. Nobody in town imagined anything extraordinary about her, but God knew her by name.

It was to that small town that God sent the angel Gabriel.

There was no thunder and no trumpet. The angel simply came in where Mary was, and the room filled with a gentle light, the kind that slips through a window at first daybreak. Then he spoke to her.

Mary stood exactly where she was. She did not cry out, or run, or call anyone. She was deeply troubled by those words, and she wondered what sort of greeting this could be, for no one had ever spoken to her that way.

The angel saw that she was startled, and he went on more slowly.

— Do not be afraid, Mary. God has looked on you with favor.

Then he told her why he had come. Mary would have a son, and his name would be Jesus. That child would be great, he would be called Son of the Most High, and his kingdom would never end.

Mary listened all the way to the end, without hurrying. Then she asked the question anyone would have asked in her place.

— How can this happen, when I am not yet married?

Mary's question was not a doubt. She believed God, and she only wanted to understand the road that was opening under her feet.

The angel answered that the Holy Spirit would come over her, and the shadow of the Most High would rest on her. That is why the child to be born would be holy, and would be called the Son of God. Gabriel gave her a sign too, so she would not be left alone with such enormous news. Elizabeth, her cousin, who was already old, had been expecting a child for six months, though everyone had said she would never have one.

Then a silence settled over that house in Nazareth.

God had made an invitation, and now he waited. The angel had not been sent to give an order, but to receive an answer, and the answer had to be freely given. For one moment the whole world went quiet, waiting to hear what a young woman from a small town would say.

Mary folded her hands and said yes in the simplest way in the world.

And the angel departed from her.

The gentle light faded slowly away. The room became a room again, with the water jar in the corner and the folded cloth on the bench. Outside, Nazareth was just as it had always been: the goats, the well, the smell of bread coming out of the ovens. No one in town had heard a thing. And yet, inside that little house, the whole world had just changed, because one person had said yes to God.