Annunciation

Annunciation

Today, we recall with gratitude and celebrate with joy the Annunciation of the Lord to Mary and His Incarnation. We focus on Christ, who on entering into the world, offers His Father an act of obedience, as He says "Behold, I come to do your will" and on Mary, who receiving God’s invitation through the Angel Gabriel to become the Mother of God, likewise makes an act of obedience, as she says: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word" The central focus of the feast of the annunciation is the Incarnation: God has become one of us. From all eternity God had decided that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity should become human. Because human beings have rejected God, Jesus will accept a life of suffering and an agonizing death: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
Mary has an important role to play in God’s plan. From all eternity God destined her to be the mother of Jesus and closely related to him in the creation and redemption of the world. Together with Jesus, the privileged and graced Mary is the link between heaven and earth. She is the human being who best, after Jesus, exemplifies the possibilities of human existence. She received into her lowliness the infinite love of God. She shows how an ordinary human being can reflect God in the ordinary circumstances of life. She exemplifies what the Church and every member of the Church is meant to become.
There is a good reason why the Annunciation occurs during Lent. Two good reasons: This day, the day that Mary finds out that she is pregnant, occurs just exactly nine months before the Nativity of the Lord in December. But, there is a deeper, subtler reason. In Lent, we talk about the way in which God decided to save the world. It happens through the death and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And, so it seems fitting that we pause for a moment to remember the very first moment when Jesus was introduced onto the stage of salvation history, that moment when he began his life within the womb of his mother the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Annunciation is one of those events which points to the human nature of Jesus. Leo the Great, who was the Bishop of Rome in the fifth century, wrote about the mystery of the dual nature of Christ in these words:
He who is true God was therefore born in the complete and perfectnature of a true human being, whole in his own nature, whole in ours. By our nature we mean what the Creator had fashioned in us from the beginning and took to himself in order to perfect it.”
The annunciation is in part about the way that God gives humanity a compassionate embrace. Remember what Leo said: God took us to himself in order to restore our human nature. God took us to himself.
As we respond to the awesome reality of God’s choosing to love us even when we were sinners by sending His Son to save us, we not only express gratitude and praise; we not only confess our sins as individuals and a parish. Inspired by the Gospel and strengthened by divine grace, we recommit ourselves "to become more like Jesus Christ, whom we acknowledge as our redeemer, God and man". We want to be like Him. He chose to do God’s will, to take up our human condition and to save us. He chose to love. We can do no less.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.