Wednesday, March 25, 2020, The Solemnity of the Annunciation

Luke 1:26–38

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. 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 favor with God. 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.” 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. 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.” 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.

On this solemn feast day, we celebrate the Incarnation of the Son of God in the chaste womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  While we rejoice at a mercy we cannot imagine and could never deserve or repay, we also pause to reflect on the Lord’s chosen instrument in his coming among us.  The angel Gabriel descends from heaven and greets her in the traditional way, with Shalom, translated by Luke into the customary Greek greeting,  kaire .  In place of her name, however, the angel calls her by a word that acts as a title.  He calls her, in Greek, κεχαριτωμένη, which we might transliterates as kekaritomenei, with the accent on the next to last syllable.  This word is in fact a perfect passive participle, indicating that the action indicated by the root verb has been completely accomplished.  In this case, this word can be translated as “having been graced”, or, “having been transformed by grace”, since that is the implication of an action being performed on a person or thing in the past.  This is what Gabriel the angel calls her.  He has seen no human like her before, not even since Eve in the Garden so long ago, for this is not only a woman created free from sin, but a woman who has rejected sin throughout her life, setting her quite apart from our first parents.  Further, God called Adam and Eve to the vocation of marriage, but he called Mary to the even higher vocation of a Virgin consecrated to him.  We see this in Mary’s reply to the angel’s words, which literally translated, are: How can this be, since I am not knowing man?  That is, she  treasures her virginity.  Following the custom of the time for a young woman of her age, she had been engaged to marry, but still she felt deeply in her soul that she was called by God to virginity.  It was no wonder that she felt perplexed.  On the one hand, she felt the divine call to a state in which she would remain unmarried and childless, a state which the Jews of the time would have considered both mad and accursed, and on the other, the herald of God was telling her that she would be the Mother of his Son.  Gabriel restores her peace of mind by explaining that she would “conceive by the Holy Spirit”, that is, the Child would not be conceived with the help of a human Father, but by a heavenly One.  God had decreed that Mary would be both Virgin and Mother.  This revelation brought her total clarity regarding the vocation God had prepared for her.  Luke tells us how she gratefully accepts God’s will: “I am the Handmaid of the Lord.  Be it done to me as you have said.”  And then she rushes off to her relative Elizabeth.  Perhaps she had sought Elizabeth’s counsel previously, and now she wishes to share God’s revelation to her.  

Beginning with an anonymous Christian author in the year 236, ancient and medieval Christians associated this day with other important days in the history of mankind.  It was thought that March 25 was not only the day of the conception of our Lord, but also the date on which he died on the Cross.  This author further speculated that this was the date for the creation of the world, for the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham on Mount Moriah, where the temple was later built, and for many other events.  While improbable, what all this tells us is how Christians throughout the ages have seen this day as a sign of God’s mercy and of his marvelous providence for our salvation.  We too ought to rejoice, meditating on the joy the Virgin Mary found in serving and loving our God.  This is a joy which we can “catch” from her and which will carry us through these perilous times.