The Annunciation

And I’m going to suggest that we do this by spending a little time with a very traditional prayer that Catholics have prayed daily, or often multiple times each day, for so many hundreds of years that its precise origins are lost in the mists of time:  the Angelus, so called from its first words in Latin: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae the angel of the Lord declared – or announced – to Mary, which you have on the sheet before you.. We could think of the Angelus as a summary of the Annunciation story, divided into three chapters each with its own title. We’ll look at each of these chapters in turn, and then pray the prayer that follows them, but first, just a thought about where we are headed with all of this.

The story of the Annunciation, of course, couldn’t be more familiar – and doubtless many of us have images of it in our heads, retained from Christmas cards, perhaps, or artwork in our churches, and one thing all these pictures tend to have in common is that they include details not found in scripture. Sometimes these are obviously put there because they stand for, symbolize something beyond themselves, like the white lily included by many artists, representing Our Lady’s purity, but just as  often they are little every day touches whose purposed seems simply to remind us that it was a real woman with a real life to whom all this happened: a kitten chasing a ball of wool with which Mary has been knitting; a basket of freshly laundered clothes at Our Lady’s feet. I came across one such picture recently that I particularly liked because it was somehow a rather chaotic laundry basket: I find it reassuring to think that, though she was immaculately conceived, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mary always had an immaculate house!  

None of these details are mentioned by St Luke, but then St Luke doesn’t give us many details at all of the event in question. But I think that nevertheless, the presence of all these little details, both those we see in old master paintings, and those we dream up for ourselves, points to  a very important truth. We might smile at pictures depicting Our Lady as a Medieval Flemish peasant or a baroque Italian noblewoman, we who know – or at least know people, even if these people are only Wikipedia, who know- what a 1^st century Galilean carpenter’s wife would really have looked like. But the artistry of our tradition isn’t demonstrating historical ignorance, so much as profound theological wisdom, when it portrays our blessed Mother in such ways, because in a sense it means depicting her as everywoman. The Second Vatican Council, picking up on a theme beloved of the Fathers of the Church tells us that Our Lady is both her Son’s first and best disciple, and an icon of the Church:  Mary, then, stands for all of us too who are members of her Son’s body. Mary is everywoman because Mary is all of us. And that means that, insofar as what happened in Nazareth when the Angel of the Lord declared to Mary was good news for Our Lady herself, it is good news for us too.

The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary, and she conceived…

There is a beautiful and rightly much-loved sermon on the Annunciation by St Bernard which imagines all of humanity watching the events at Nazareth unfold, poised, as it were, on the edge of its seat, waiting to know its fate: in this cosmic cliff-hanger, will Mary say yes, or no? Will Jesus be born to set us free, or will we languish in our captivity to sin and death? As we’ll see, this certainly points to something true, which is very good news, both for Mary and for us – but it’s not quite what the Gospel says at this point.   Gabriel doesn’t ask Mary anything: he tells her. You will conceive, you will bear a Son. And at first sight, this might seem almost the opposite of good news, for both Mary and for us. Doesn’t this mean that God is tyrannizing Mary, who must simply acquiesce?  And doesn’t this in turn mean that in taking Mary as our model we risk exposing ourselves to the possibility of exploitation or worse by those who are stronger than us? It’s an understandable concern that people sometimes have; that perhaps even we ourselves might sometimes have had. But, carefully understood, I think the fact that Mary is told, not asked, can be a source of deep consolation, precisely in those moments when we are most aware, and most afraid, of our own weakness.

When Gabriel busts in, or edges in, or slips in, on Our Lady (and artists and poets have depicted the scene in all these ways and more) and gives her not merely a life-changing but a world-changing message, he tells us that the Lord is with her. And this is consoling precisely because this is not something she has engineered, not – surely – what she was expecting when she got up that morning.   The Lord is with her, not as a reward for her  having done the right thing, or come up with the best scheme, or made the right choice, but in order to strengthen her for what is to come, for a task that would otherwise have seemed both incomprehensible and impossible.

And it is this same God who is with Mary, who is with us in the things we don’t design or intend,  in our days that are interrupted by things we can hardly understand or bear, in the things we can only do if we are reminded that nothing is impossible for God.  That, I think, is good news for us, as it must have been for Mary.

Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word.

So, Mary is told she is to be the mother of the Lord, told not asked, but that doesn’t mean her response isn’t important, and again this is good news for us as well as for Mary. Be it done to me according to thy word:  Mary is obedient, aligning her will with that of God, as her Son will align his will with his heavenly Father’s in Gethsemane, when he says, confronted with the cup of suffering on the night before his Passion, nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.  Our Medieval ancestors, of course, rightly loved to contrast Mary, the obedient Second Eve, with the first, disobedient Eve, noting for instance, that, in Latin, the first word of Gabriel to Mary, Ave, Hail, is Eva backwards, symbolizing how Our Lady reverses the process begun in Eden.

But the difference between Mary and Eve is not, as I think is sometimes supposed – and feared-  that between unquestioning obedience and questioning disobedience, but just the reverse: the difference between questioning obedience - in the case of Mary -  and unquestioning disobedience in the case of Eve.   After all, when the serpent tells her that she will become as God if only she does as he commands, Eve does not enquire “how can this be?”: she simply swallows the lie along with the forbidden fruit.

But Mary, when confronted with what sounds like nonsense, a contradiction in terms -  a virgin shall conceive – does ask that radical question: how can this be, since I know not a man?  And it is only when Gabriel has answered this question – awe-inspiringly, but to her satisfaction - that St Luke tells us Mary accepts her extraordinary vocation. The Holy Spirit will come upon you; the power of the most high will overshadow you:  behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy Word.

And this has deeply consoling implications.  We recently celebrated the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, when we are reminded of Mary’s sinlessness - and it is precisely the sinless New Eve who talks back to God.  We need never be afraid, then, that to wrestle with what God asks of us, rather than simply passively acquiescing, is somehow disrespectful or disloyal or prideful; we need never fear, that our questions will alienate us from the God who loves us and longs for us to relate to him in honesty and trust as Mary did perfectly.  Perhaps this is especially true when we too confront our Gethsemane moments, when our “be it done to me” is the hardest to pronounce. The Lord is with us, too.  And that, surely, is good news.

And the Word was made Flesh

We have been thinking about how the Annunciation isn’t just what makes preaching the gospel possible, but actually is itself gospel preaching: the good news of God’s love both for Mary and for us, in all the circumstances of our lives, even those that are the most daunting; the good news that God accepts us in all our questioning and striving, as he accepted Mary in hers.  

 But there is more to be said.  Jesus doesn’t only preach the Good News. He is the Good News, the Father’s message to all of us, the Word of the Father, who is made flesh. And so, his coming to be in the womb of Mary means that Mary receives that Good News into her very body and soul. The Word is made flesh, and dwells in Mary, and in Mary dwells among us.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. These words, of course, come not from St Luke but from St John, and elsewhere in his Gospel, St John loves to speak of Jesus abiding in us, staying in us, and indeed of us staying in him: an incredibly beautiful image of security, of stability, of being at home, on which we could spend a lifetime reflecting.  But the word translated here as dwelt has a rather different emphasis. Most literally, what St John says here is that the Word became flesh and pitched his tent amongst us.  Tents are, of course, not permanent abodes: nomads live in tents, those who precisely do not abide in one place. So, the dwelling of the Word amongst us that John is talking about here is a presence with those on the move. Later this morning, we’ll hear more about Mary on the move, with Jesus inside her – Jesus has pitched his tent in Mary, and travels with and in Mary to Elizabeth both to celebrate with her cousin the mighty acts of God and simply to be with her in her time of need.    But he is also in and amongst us in all the journeys we undertake. He is with us when we must literally move, when changes in our circumstances uproot us from places we have known and loved, strengthening us in all the uncertainty and sometimes pain that this may bring. He is with us as we journey in our understanding, as God asks new things of us, and as we in turn ask ever deeper questions of God – how can this be, what do you want of me, how can I do your will? And he is with us, too, as we journey like Mary to bring comfort and compassion to those who need them and who are given us to care for.  And all of this, surely, is good news too.

So, let us pray:

Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an angel, may be brought by his Passion and Cross, to the glory of his resurrection, through the same, Christ our Lord. Amen.