Feast of the Annunciation

"Mary became the Mother of God at the moment of the Incarnation. It was a moment for which God had richly prepared her. Through the fullness of grace which He gave her, Mary had lived a life of obedience to the will of God. Her every thought and action had been formed in the burning crucible of charity or the love of God. She had even conceived the resolution to devote herself to the service of God by a vow of virginity. At the moment chosen by God, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her in bodily form and announced to her the great purpose for which God had chosen her. 'Hail, full of grace,' he said, and his words signified her worthiness to fulfill the role for which she was destined. 'The Lord is with thee,' he continued, and in these words he announced the conception that was to take place. When Mary gave full consent of her loving, obedient heart in the words, 'Be it done unto me according to thy word,' the marriage between God and human nature was complete. God had become man, and in the consent of Mary all mankind consented to its own ennoblement in the God-man, Christ. Eve had seduced Adam to the destruction of the human race. Mary conceived Christ for the salvation of the human race."

-- My Way of Life: The Summa Simplified for Everyone by  Walter Farrell, OP, STM, and Martin J Healy, STD

** The painting is by Fra Angelico.

Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

"The mysteries of God are unsearchable, as is especially declared in the prophetical words: What man is he that can know the counsel of God? or who can think what the will of the Lord is?  Nevertheless, some things have been revealed to us.  And hence we may gather, from the words and works of our Lord and Saviour, that there was a special purpose of God in the fact that she who was chosen to bring forth the Lord was espoused to a man.  Why did not the power of the Highest overshadow her before she was so espoused?  Perhaps it was lest any might blasphemously say that the Holy One was conceived in fornication.

And the Angel came in unto her.  Let us learn from his Virgin how to bear ourselves: let us learn by her devout utterance; above all let us learn by the holy mystery to be timid, to avoid the advances of men, and to shrink from men's addresses.  Would that our women would learn from the example of modesty here set before us.  She upon whom the stare of men had never been fixed was alone in her chamber, and was found only by an Angel.  There was neither companion nor witness there, that what passed might not be debased in gossip; and the Angel saluted her."

-- From a homily by St Ambrose

** Painting by Peter Paul Rubens

Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

"God is he whose nature is goodness, whose will is power, and whose work is mercy.  Wherefore, at the very beginning of the world, as soon as the devil's hatred had mortally poisoned mankind with the venom of his envy, this almighty and merciful God even then foretold those remedies which his mercy had foreordained for our healing.  At that time he bade the serpent know that there was to be a Seed of the woman who yet should crush the prideful swelling of his pestilential head.  This Seed was none other than the Christ to come in the flesh, even God and Man in one Person, who should be born of the Virgin, and by his virgin-birth should condemn the seducer of man.


The devil rejoiced that he had, by his artful cunning, so deceived man as to make him lose the gifts of God, and forfeit the privilege of eternal life.  Yea, when the devil had thus brought man under the hard sentence of death, he found a certain solace for his own misery in the fact that he now had a comrade in his guilt.  He thought also that God, in his just anger, would change his original design towards man, whom he had made in such honour.  But, dearly beloved, that unchangeable God, whose will cannot be baulked of its loving-kindness, in the dispensation of his own secret counsel, had already provided a mysterious way for carrying out his original purpose of goodness.  So it was that mankind, which had been led into sin by the wicked craft of the devil, was not suffered to perish, and frustrate that gracious purpose of God.


When, therefore, dearly beloved, the fulness of that time was come, which God had appointed for our redemption, our Lord Jesus Christ entered this lower world.  Christ came down from his heavenly throne.  And, while he left not that glory which he hath with the Father before the world was, he was incarnate by a new order and a new birth, in that he who is invisible among his own, was made visible among us.  He who is before the ages, began to be in time.  He who is the Lord of all placed the glory of his majesty under a shadow, for he took upon him the form of a servant.  Thus God the Impassible vouchsafed to become a man subject to suffering, and the Immortal laid himself under the laws of death."

-- From a sermon by St Leo the Great

** Painting by Murillo