The old version of Mary as passive and submissive is a lie. Look deeply at the story and you see in it a woman of immense strength, surrendered to God but not submissive; humble, patient, tender, infinitely focused on and burning with real love, but never passive. As the French mystic Meubert put it: "This Virgin so tender is the most indomitable of women. There never was a man so full of strength and character as this woman."
— Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother