Before the great mystery of the Incarnation, God has given us the great mystery of the Annunciation. Each of these two mysteries illuminate one another, revealing to us depth upon depth of reality containing infinite meaning, divine and human.
Each year, the Church celebrates this awesome mystery of the Annunciation, not only because it sheds a brilliant light on who our Lord is but also because it teaches us more about who our Lady is. In fact, we cannot understand one without the other, for Jesus Christ is the Son of God as much as He is the Son of Mary.
This intimate and hidden – yet revealed – bond is beautifully expressed by two Carthusian prayers, one entitled “Offering to the Heart of Jesus” and the other called “Offering to our Blessed Lady”, both coming to us from the Middle Ages. In them we read: “O Thou Who art the one true and most faithful friend of my soul, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and of the most compassionate Virgin Mary” and “O Blessed Virgin Mary, my Queen, I will praise and honour thee through the most gentle Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Thy Son.”
The two hearts are so closely united that they are one: those who love, as St John of the Cross so splendidly observed, become more and more alike to their beloved. And who loved Jesus more, after His Eternal Father, than Mary? It is on this aspect – the bond between Mother and Son – that the mystery of the Annunciation has much to say and on which I shall focus here.
Luke 1:26-27
“In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.”
Already, before Jesus was born, we see a glimpse of how our Lord shall be seen: as a sign of contradiction (cf Luke 3:34). The Jews doubted His Nazarene roots (cf John 1:46), expecting, as the Scripture is saying – and as it actually happened – that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (cf Luke 2:1-20, Matt 2:1-6, Mic 5:1-2). Jesus was born in a manger, or a cave, depending on the translation, in Bethlehem. However, He was also from Nazareth in as much as His mother was from there because, even if the royal title as the descendent of David came through Joseph (cf Matt 1:1-17), the flesh with which the Word of God united Himself was Mary’s. Therefore, Mary, by her very origin, already shares in the mystery of Jesus Christ, as a sign of contradiction.
Luke 1:28-30
“And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.”
In the depths of eternity, hidden in the Heart of Love Eternal, the Father said to the Son: “You are my son, today I have begotten you” (Ps 6:7). This “today” is the “other day” – the eternal day – of which St John of the Cross wrote in his “Spiritual Canticle”, the day of never-ending life, of everlasting love (cf Jer 31:3).
“You are my son…From the womb of the morning I begot you…the morning star…a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Ps 6:7. Ps 110:3, Rev 22:16, Luke 2:32). From all eternity God the Father thus prepared our salvation and then, “in the sixth month” (Luke 1:26) He sent His angel, from the atemporal realm of eternity to the time frame of the world that is passing away (cf 1 John 2:17, 1 Cor 7:31), to Mary – “the womb of the morning” (Ps 110:3), “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), the “daughter of the Father” (Lumen gentium, n53).
The words spoken by the angel Gabriel are the words of God: “Hail, full of grace”. It is this salutation which reveals our Lady’s Immaculate Conception – born without sin. These words also reveal Mary’s vocation as the Mother of God, preserved from all eternity by the grace of God from all sin, a grace with which Mary will co-operate when She will give Her consent to conceive and bear “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32). Those words in Luke 1:28 tell Mary – and us all – God’s plan for our Lady, revealing something which cannot be totally comprehended: “full of grace” – so unexpected, so amazing, so divine are these words that our Lady, in Her unmatched humility “was greatly troubled at the saying” (Luke 1:29) for She regarded Herself of “low estate” (Luke 1:48) and was surprised that God Almighty would choose to send His messenger to Her.
This humbleness of not expecting anything from God, let alone that He ought to notice Her, is also reflected in our Lady’s bewilderment at hearing the angel’s words: Mary “considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29). To this reaction, the angel replied: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God” (Luke 1:30). This fear is the fear of the Lord, the beginning of all wisdom (cf Ps 111:10, Prov 9:10-12), for one of our Lady’s titles is “Seat of Wisdom”. She was afraid of the apparition of God’s messenger because Mary was wise, fearing God as a daughter fears to upset her father and being prudent not to be led astray by this vision, She “considered in her mind” the situation.
However, as the angel was from God who is love (cf 1 John 4:8), he says the words that God alone – Perfect Love – can say in such a moment: “Do not be afraid”. Why? Because “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18) and Mary loved God perfectly – that is, as perfect as Her state as a created being enabled Her, and for this reason, because of Her perfect love for God, our Lady “found favour with God”. And what favour – and what suffering Her perfect love will bring to Her!
Luke 1:31-33
“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
“The womb of the morning” (PS 110:3) is Mary’s womb, “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), without sin, as the Church has held from ancient times (Ineffabilis Deo), a place where the “Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32) became flesh to dwell among us (cf John 1:14). The very first line of the passage quoted above reveals a deeper reality of God’s plan of salvation: through the mystery of the Annunciation, or rather, within it, there is a revelation of a bigger mystery: that of the Incarnation.
“And you shall name him Jesus” (Luke 1:31), “the Word” who is God (cf John 1:1) sent His angel (cf Rev 22:16) so that His messenger may announce the will of the Father to redeem fallen man (cf John 3:16). Jesus, dulcis memoria (St Bernard of Clairvaux). Before the angel Gabriel spoke, You were – You are. Jesus, who, one day will behold Mary, and say through His pain and love from the Cross, with “words of eternal life” (John 6:68-69), “Woman, behold your son!” (John 19:16).
With the words “the Son of the Most High”, God, through His angel, invites Mary to be His Mother. What must have been like for our Lady to hear these words? We find the answer a few lines below in the same Gospel (cf Luke 1:46-55): “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaid” (Luke 1:46-48). Our Lady calls God “my Saviour”, and yet She was conceived without sin; Her words in the “Magnificat”, read in context of the mystery of the Annunciation, shed more light on the mystery of the Incarnation: Mary needed to be saved – like all human beings since Adam’s sin – and She was saved by a unique grace offered to Her as the Mother of “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32), a grace with which She cooperated (cf Luke 1:38), and, as a result of which, Mary humbled Herself even more before God, as Her words to Elizabeth attest.
Then the angel of God speaks the following words to our Lady: “the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32-33). Mary now knows that Jesus is to be the Mesiah, “the offspring of David” (Rev 22:16), the Anointed One of God. These words contain, hidden, the entire salvation history up to that point, which was “the dawn from on high” (Luke 1:78), through the “tender mercy” of God (Luke 1:78), coming upon the world “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:39).
In this sense, Mary is the first one to get a glimpse of “the mystery hidden from ages and generations” (Col 1:26), of God’s plan of salvation into which “angels long to look” (1 Pet 1:12). After all, Mary is Mother of the Apostles and of the Church. It is only fitting that our Lady would receive this privilege from God who loves Her so much.
Our Lady submits, but with dignity, a dignity of a saint for she utters: “How will this be, since I do not know man?” (Luke 1:34).
Luke 1:34 – 35
“But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”
The dialogue recorded by St Luke in these two lines of the Gospel is of a celestial beauty that is unmatched. On one hand, we have a glimpse of the inclination of our Lady’s heart. There is a holy confidence in Mary’s question that is pleasing to God: it is the confidence of faith in Him. Mary knew that God would never ask something immoral or sinful and therefore She does not say “this cannot be for I am not yet married”, to put Her own understanding of the message above the words of God. Mary’s heart is fixed on God, the God of love eternal who wants all to be holy, so She desires to do His will, while at the same time being thoroughly conscious of Her femininity, and of the spousal meaning of the human body: She is not a dreamer or an idealist – faith is a very pragmatic and rational thing: the eyes of faith do not alter reality, but enable us to see it to a fuller extent.
God, through His angel, seeing the purity of Mary, Her innocence and Her heart already inclined to His words, gives an answer which demonstrates the true source of Mary’s question: Her love of God. He does not rebuke Mary for asking this question but gently replies, respecting the awesome dignity of His beloved creature. And He explains His secret thoughts:
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you” – there is so much contained in these words…In a sense, these words bring to mind the Dove that descended from the heavens above Jesus when He was baptised in the Jordan river (cf John 1:32) and, at the same time, it summons before our eyes the image of the flaming tongues that rested above the Apostles at Pentecost (cf Acts 2:1-4). The Holy Spirit came upon Mary – the spouse of the Holy Spirit, the Mother of God, upon Jesus – the Son of God, giver, with the Father, of the Holy Spirit – and upon the Apostles, the Church guided by the Holy Spirit in all truth (cf John 14:17). The images of these events are important, for they are rooted in an everlasting reality, and gloriously beautiful for they bring forth the presence of God; the dove symbolises purity (cf SoS 4:1) and life (cf Gen 8:6), and the tongues of fire are ablaze with love and truth.
Mary was “overshadowed” (Luke 1:35) by the Holy Spirit, “the power of the Most High” (Luke 1:35), “therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of the God” (Luke 1:35) – the Christ, who is called Jesus. First, the angel revealed the human nature of Mary’s son, through His name, Jesus, then the divine nature of the same person, the Son of God; one person, two natures. See, how deep is the mystery of the Annunciation?
Luke 1:36-37
“And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.”
Did Mary doubt what the angel Gabriel said previously about the Holy Spirit and who Her Jesus is? No. These two lines are for us, sinners and doubters. They contain an entire theology of what we call “miracle”. The first line reveals a natural limitation of the human body – Elizabeth is with child, Elizabeth “who was called barren” (Luke 1:36) – which is not bypassed or suspended, but healed: the limitation is fully acknowledged, natural order is given its due, and then uplifted, made whole, healed again. All that is natural is made by God and was blessed by God, before man’s fall into sin (Gen 1,2), but sin brought nature – initially an ordered harmony – into the disorder of death. This is why St Paul writes to the Romans that the entire creation “waits with eager longing” to be “set free from its bondage to decay” (Rom 8:19-23).
Miracles do not suspend what we have come to call – pretentiously so – the laws of nature, because they are not incompatible with nature. Supranatural and natural realities have the same source: God Himself. He has no need to “break” the laws of nature for, if there be any such laws, He is the Lawmaker. Rather, miracles are part of the economy of salvation, just like the wood (a most natural thing) from which the Cross of our Lord was made is. Miracles heal what was distorted by sin, especially human nature, body-and-soul. The second line in the paragraph quoted above is almost the voice of the miracle itself, confessing who is its Author: “For with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37). We see that miracles are not what we often think of them: impossibilities made possible by God. Rather, they are as mundane for God as anything else, because all is possible for Him.
Moreover, a child is “the fruit of the womb” (Ps 127:3), “a heritage from the Lord” (Ps 127:3), hence why the angel adds the good news about Elizabeth in the annunciation of the Good News for all.
Luke 1:38
“Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her”
We have reached the culmination of our short meditation on our Lady’s “fiat”. With the words, “behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord”, Mary said in the same voice with all the prophets: “Here I am, O Lord, your servant is listening!” (cf Exo 3:4,1 Sam 3:4, Isa 6:8), for wasn’t everything that God said through His angel an invitation that can be summarised as: “Who shall love Us?”. If to the Prophet Isaiah, God said: “Who shall go for Us?”, to Mary He asked: “Who shall love Us?”, for only by love life is brought forth into the world, referring here to our Lord’s human nature.
However, Mary’s “yes” to God’s call was not so that She could proclaim the truth, as the prophets of old did, but so that Truth may come down from his eternal throne above the cherubim (cf Ps 80:1, Ps 99:1, Isa 37:16) into our time, “in the sixth month” (Luke 1:26), and dwell among us so that He – Jesus Christ – the truth, the way, and the life may speak to men words of eternal life (cf John 14:16, John 6:68-69).
Mary, “blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” (Luke 1:42) – a woman; as a woman She offered Her body as a sacrifice by submitting Her entire self (body-and-soul) to God’s will. To bear a child and to give birth, a blessing from the beginning (cf Gen 1:28) that contains the full mystery of creation out of nothing, is also a great sacrifice, especially for the woman whose body becomes the home for the little “lily of the valley” (SoS 2:1), from the first moment, a moment inscribed in eternity before all the days of the child were even in existence (cf Ps 139:16), that God’s love blossoms into a new person in His image and likeness (cf Gen 1:27-28), a moment with a beginning veiled in the depths of eternity from where God speaks, and from where all were made through His Word (cf John 1: 3). Of course, there is no creation with the Second Person of the most Holy Trinity, but the physical hardship and risk associated with human birth, in the case of our Lord, remained a reality for Mary.
What were these risks? Some were personal, relating to Her own body and health, for the entire process of bearing and nurturing a child, as happy and joyous as it is, it is also painful and difficult. Moreover, this – to bear and care for a child – is the centre of our Lady’s femininity (as it is for any woman, especially for Her who is “blessed among women”). It is this most intimate part of Her that Mary offered to God when She said: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word”. However, as it is the case with any mother, Mary will share in the life of Her Son: His pain will be Her pain. This is why Christian art depicts the two Hearts almost always next to one another, for they are indeed inseparable because they are but one.
We see how Mary’s joy for being the Mother of the Most High shall turn into sorrow from the prophecy of holy Simeon: “And a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35). However, even before this prophecy, Mary (and Joseph, whose love and faith mirrors those of his beloved spouse, the Virgin Mother of God) encounters the sufferings caused by the weight of the world upon the shoulders of Her unborn child, as the Holy Family is refused shelter in Bethlehem and She gives birth to Jesus in a manger (cf Luke 2:1-24).
There are other risks to which Mary said “yes” when She accepted God’s call. At the time when angel Gabriel appeared to Her, She was not married to Joseph, and neither did Mary know how Joseph would react: if he would still want to marry Her or not. But our Lady heard and made Her own God’s words that Her own son will speak so often to His disciples: fear not. Indeed, Mary feared not. She knew God, this Ocean of Love that does not forget anyone, for all live to Him (cf Luke 20:38), especially those who fear Him. Indeed, the angel departed from Mary and went to Joseph to remove this danger immediately making him partaker in the mystery of God’s plan for salvation (cf Matt 1:20). This risk, however, is worth pondering on, because in our world today, there are many single mothers, abandoned by men, many of whom are cowards and never even intended to marry them. Men today should look up to St Joseph and learn from him how to be true husbands and fathers.
Our Lady took on Her the potential suffering associated with saying “yes” to God’s will, as well as the actual suffering that came as a result of Her being the Mother of Jesus, playing Her part in the economy of salvation.
Image credit: Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, The Annunciation, 1725-1727
Nihil Sine Deo 