“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.
Appropriate to the theme of the Annunciation itself, the celebration of the Annunciation, if it falls in Holy Week or in Easter Week, is deferred to the Tuesday following the Octave Day of Easter. The logic is wonderful. It is about a principled kind of deference. Mary says ‘yes’ to God so that through her God in Christ can effect human salvation, “for he is the very Paschal Lamb, which was offered for us, and hath taken away the sin of the world; who by his death hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again hath restored to us everlasting life,” as the proper preface for Easter and Eastertide so properly and theologically puts it. How can he be offered for us? How can he take away the sin of the world? How can his death destroy death? How can his rising to life again restore to us everlasting life? Only through the humanity he assumes – gets – from Mary at the Annunciation. In Athanasius’ rich phrase, “Christ borrowed a body so that he could borrow a death”. Something happens on the Cross in what belongs to the truth of our humanity. Something happens on the Cross in the pure and true humanity which is in Christ as derived from Mary.
What happens is the restoration of our humanity through the Cross and the grave but only because of Christ’s Incarnation which is for the sake of our redemption. Deep and important themes. They may puzzle and mystify but they belong to the mystery of our Faith. We are not fundamentally defined by sin and sorrow, by evil and wickedness. God effects our salvation in the truth of our humanity – pure, true and without sin – through the union of humanity and divinity in Christ. His humanity derives from Mary whose ‘yes’ belongs to the real and deep truth of our humanity. Its truth is found in communion with God. Our communion with God is accomplished in and through the sin and folly of our disordered humanity. God makes a way for us to him “through the valley of the shadow of death”, through the vales of human misery, as it were. They become the pilgrim ways. It requires that the humility of Mary define us. Her “be it unto me” turns into “thy will be done” in our prayers.
Where Christ is, there is Mary. The Resurrection is about our life with God in Christ and so with Mary. Her deference to the priority of God’s Word becomes our deference to God’s Word and Son, too. Like her, we are meant to ponder the meaning of all the words that are spoken about Christ. Like her, we are meant to be defined by the Word of God in Jesus Christ. His Word is life. The life of the Resurrection is about the life of God alive in us.
“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Fr. David Curry
Annunciation (transf.) 2016