This is a beautiful feast day.
When it falls in Lent, as it usually does, it is a harbinger of Easter. It’s the vital secret presupposition. It’s what gives Easter its full charge: this man, this son of Mary is the Son of God, God himself. At the Annunciation the Word of God is secretly sown in Mary’s womb, the Holy Spirit’s work, not man’s. And this seed grows, not just in the dark nine months of pregnancy, but for some thirty years of life. It grows into a boy, a youth, a man. It becomes tall with divine and human wisdom, grace and power to heal, disciples springing from him like branches of a vine. Then felled, cut down and killed, and stored away in a cold stone tomb, shunted back to the dark. On Easter Sunday, though, the sown Word flowers from the empty tomb, complete and radiant, beyond the hold of death, the Word unable ever to be silenced.
No wonder there was an ancient tradition that the 25th of March was the day both of Jesus’ conception and of his death. It is because the one who offered his life on the Cross and rose from the dead is both God and man, that this death and resurrection are all they are, can do what they do. And the becoming-man, becoming-flesh, becoming-us of God took place in Mary’s womb, today. Everything flows from this.
Today is first of all a feast of the Lord. It’s the feast of his human conception, the unseen beginning of his human life, and in that of his incarnation. As the Gospel book was carried to the ambo, we heard St John’s familiar words, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory”. “When Christ came into the world…”, says the Letter to the Hebrews. Today all three Persons of the Trinity conspired to work a wonder. The Father, out of love, longing to reclaim and regather us, sends his Son. And the Son says in reply to the Father: “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book”, from the very beginning of my human life. And the one who sows together, as it were, God and man is the Holy Spirit himself. Today, we celebrate a wedding, a marriage, intimate and lasting, “an indissoluble and wedded union of the divine nature with human nature in the one person of the Word” (St Paul VI). “You have prepared a body for me” – through the Eucharist, ourselves! Today, we might say, God has tattooed himself with our humanity, we’re inked into him now, we’re under his skin, and we can never be erased.
Everything begins today. No wonder that for many centuries the 25th of March began the year. No wonder it follows on the heels of spring. No surprise that in the mythical chronology of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, it’s on the 25th of March that the ring of power is destroyed, the kingdom of Sauron collapses and a new age begins for humanity. No wonder so many artists have painted the Gospel scene, the angel courting the listening girl.
For this is Mary’s feast as well. A poet captures it well.
“Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –
but who was God.
This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.” (Denise Levertov)
To paraphrase St Thomas Aquinas, she spoke for us all. The Lord’s “behold I come to do your will” was echoed in her “behold I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word”. This duet of consent of Son and Mother is conveyed us-wards by the Holy Spirit and becomes what empowers our own consents. I think of our brave catechumens and those seeking full communion from another Christian background.
In our own lives there are indeed annunciations, angels that visit with good words, callings forth, offers of spiritual springtime, of exodus and Passover, of cross and resurrection Not always easy, calling for courage and trust. We can perhaps think back to the calls we have responded to and share our willingness to go God’s way with Jesus and Mary.
Today the Calendar of Saints also remembers the good thief, Dysmas, someone who took his second chance…
