The Gospel  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.

 

After the Gospel:

 

If you wanted to create your own icon of the Annunciation, all you would need is:  an angel, a virgin, and the Holy Spirit.

They’re the whole story: angel, virgin, Holy Spirit.

All the rest is fill-in decoration.

 

We know that our prayers and our creed go together: What we believe shows up in our prayers,

and our prayers express what we believe.

 

Each day we re-live the Annunciation three times in the Angelus prayer:

 

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,

when she replied, “Be it done unto me according to your word,”

The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.”

 

Few words, simple words, but with them, we tell how heaven intersected with earth in a new way, and how the human race will never be the same.

 

Brothers and sisters, today we thank God for the most amazing fact in the whole history of the human race.    The Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, became human flesh, He became the Son of Mary.

 

It’s the continuation of the story of God’s love for us…

Which began with God creating mankind to begin with,

then  God freely giving  humanity life, and a share of his divine life,

in the time when there was no sin ..

 

The Annunciation tells of the culmination of that love …  a wedding … 

The wedding of God with humanity,

how God bonded himself to us,

“Bound the human family to himself with a bond so tight that it can never be undone” –

the wedding of the Spirit of Wisdom and Love with the dust of the earth.  

It’s the story of how the Father in heaven sent his Son,

how his Son – the Eternal Word –  became man, born without an earthly father,

to redeem us, to save the fallen world.

What fiction writer could compose such a story?

 

But God needed a woman, a mother.

Whenever God has intersected with humanity, whenever he has renewed the face of the earth, he seems to have chosen some humble little human creature to help him.

In all the instances we know of, it has not been to great or powerful people that the Spirit has come, but to the little, the weak, the frightened. 

 

So the angel of the Lord came to a peasant girl in Nazareth, a nobody in the eyes of the world.  She was from a destitute, besieged people in an occupied country.

She was a teenage girl, unlettered, unmarried, uncultured. Stuck in a deadend town, with little to look forward to except years of hard work and anonymity. Crushed, like her people, by centuries of oppression.  

 

Yet God saw something  worldly eyes could never see, so he chose her, Mary of Nazareth, and betrothed her to himself.  It was the wedding of God to a young human girl, and the wonder of it has filled heaven and earth for all time.

 

It was upon her that the Power of God descended that day, and the love of God for humanity culminated in the conception of Christ in her womb. In her virginal emptiness, Christ was conceived, knit together stitch by stitch in his mother’s womb, just like any of us… the true Son of God was now true Son of Mary.          From God’s point of view,  it almost seemed as if God becoming man and being born of a woman  were something very ordinary.

 

Mary was not asked to do anything herself, to perform some great mission, 

but, rather, to let something be done to her.

She was not asked to be active in some way,  but to consent, to surrender, to be passive.

Not to renounce anything, but to receive an incredible gift.

Not to lead some special kind of life, to live alone, to retire to the temple and pray,

but to go forward with her marriage to Joseph,  to live the life of a carpenter’s wife,

to do just what she had planned to do the day before,   when she had no idea that anything out of the ordinary would happen to her.

 

And Our Lady accepted God’s plan. She said Yes.   With marvelous trust in the unknown, she said Yes.  She said Yes for herself, Yes for the whole human race, Yes for you and for me.

 

That’s what we remember when we pray the Angelus:

 

It’s not some odd collection of bell-ringing we hear when  three times a day  –  at daybreak, at noon, as evening falls –  bells all over the world ring out the Angelus….

it’s the Church reminding us of the unique entry of God into human history,

reminding  Christians to pause and be thankful for God’s mercy to his people.

 

The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she conceived of the Holy Spirit! 

Behold the Handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to your word!

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us!

 

For us, it’s our moment of grace and peace.

For God, it’s our act of faith, our way of saying Thank You, which is very pleasing to God.