The Solemnity of the Annunciation: Love Breaking Through
Let us rejoice! Mary hears the word of the angel, and replies in her own wonderful words: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
—Saint Alphonsus Liguori
The story of the Annunciation is one that we know well and, because we know it so well, it seems quite simple: There is God’s choice, the intervention of the Holy Spirit, Mary’s faith-inspired acceptance, and the conception of God’s Son by a teenage girl. In the Annunciation, however, Mary did not understand everything that was happening to her. She had to accept Gods’ mysterious ways. But she trusted.
Reflecting on this, theologian Leonardo Boff has written:
“The Annunciation exemplifies the dynamics of Mary’s faith… She is conscious that what is growing within her womb is somehow divine. She does not doubt this interior illumination that has been granted to her; she asks only how it will come about. She accepts unseen realities, and believes, because nothing is impossible for God” (from The Maternal Face of God: The Feminine and Its Religious Expression).
On this great feast, we celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation as the One who is the Word of God takes on our human nature in the womb of a teenage girl. We also begin looking toward Christmas, the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, which is nine months from today.
“The Annunciation” by Blessed Fra Angelico in the Convent of San Marco, Florence, Italy (1440-1445)
Mary’s humble acceptance speaks to us of the readiness to accept God’s will, in whatever way it is manifested, that each of us must have if Christ is to be born in us. Mary makes her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead.
“I treasure the story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Do I ask of it what it cannot answer? Shrugging, do I retreat into facile cliché, the popular but false wisdom of what ‘we all know’? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest truest self, and say something new, a ‘yes’ that will change me forever?”—Kathleen Norris (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)
As we celebrate today’s Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, take time to reflect on the many ways that God has invited you to do— and to be—more in your life. Ask Mary, the Mother of the Savior, to be your companion and guide, helping you to respond from your “deepest truest self” to what God might be asking of you today.
O God, who willed that your Word
should take on the reality of human flesh
in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
grant, we pray,
that we, who confess our Redeemer to be God and man,
may merit to become partakers even in his divine nature.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
