Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation
“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Is this a kind of fatalism? An acquiescence to ‘the way things are’ or are ‘going to be’? That might be how we feel in a time of isolation and virtual lock-down. It might seem that all and every kind of agency that belongs to human dignity is being taken away and we are trapped.
And while there are many, many uncertainties, and no end of fears and worries that are part of our current experience in the face of the Covid-19 outbreak, including how authorities deal or don’t deal with it, Mary’s words are not about a lack of agency or a kind of fatalism. They are more about an active willing of God’s will or Providence and as such belong to human freedom, agency, and accountability. They belong, in other words to what it properly means to be human which is not about manipulation, not about being reduced to machines, to automatons and bots, but about responsibility and agency. Mary’s words define our humanity and remind us that without God we are radically incomplete.
Mary’s Annunciation falls this year within the range of mid-Lent, a complement at once to the week following ‘Mothering Sunday,’ ‘Laetare’ or Rejoicing Sunday, as the Fourth Sunday in Lent is often called, as well as belonging to the essential orientation of the Lenten Journey that brings us to the Passion of Christ. Simply put, her fiat mihi, her “be it unto me according to thy word” anticipates and participates in what will be Christ’s great word of prayer in Gethsemane and his prayers to the Father on the Cross. “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” “I have come,” Jesus says, “to do the will of him who sent me.” He is defined by his eternal and essential orientation to the Father. As Mary shows, that orientation also belongs to the essential meaning of the truth of our humanity. In other words, Mary shows us exactly what it means to be truly and purely human. “Thy will be done.”
