Sermon for the Annunciation
“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Mary’s word captures the truth of our humanity. It signals the virtue of humility, the virtue of an honest deference to what is absolutely prior, namely, the word of God. This is what defines Mary and, in turn, defines the Church.
The Annunciation is ordinarily celebrated on March 25th, nine months before Christ’s birth from Mary in Bethlehem on December 25th. For centuries March 25th has marked the beginning of the Christian new year; time itself being measured by the doctrinal moments in the life of Christ. Her Annunciation is his conception in Mary, the beginning of his incarnate life. Her Annunciation marks the beginning of the intimate engagement of God with our humanity. Christ becomes human through Mary, through Mary’s great ‘yes’ to God.
This year, 2016, the 25th of March coincided with Good Friday as it has at various times, such as in 1608. Then it occasioned a poem by John Donne on the paradox of Christ’s coming to us through Mary and Christ’s going from us into death through the Crucifixion, what he called in a marvelous economy of language “the abridgement of Christ’s story” in the conjunction of the Angel’s Ave and Christ’s Consummatum Est. There is something wonderful in the overlap between the Annunciation and Good Friday. It underscores a fundamental and necessary Christian insight; namely, the intimate connection between Christmas and Easter, between the Incarnation and Redemption. The interplay of theological concepts is an integral feature of orthodox thinking; the abridgement of Christ’s story, the story of human redemption.
