NOTES for Luk 1:38
As one wise person said: "If the Angel had not departed from the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph would have been left without soup." This rule also regulates our life, giving it the necessary balance between the spiritual and the earthly. One cannot spend one's whole life in the presence of angels. God reveals Himself to us in eternity, but this eternity breaks into our world for seconds, minutes, perhaps hours. And then we return to our "soup," and the main problem becomes preserving what was revealed.
To keep words in one's heart, as the Virgin Mary did, is not a very simple matter. Daily prayer, daily reading of Scripture, church life, all this requires separate efforts when there are neither angels nor mystical illuminations, when there is only "soup." But precisely such a life, when the Word is not choked by thorns and daily life does not swallow what has been stored in the heart, makes it possible to bear fruit a hundred times greater than what was sown (Mt 13:1-23).