“And she was troubled at this saying”
The Ember Days are a special spiritual reminder of the primacy of the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit as the guiding principle of the Church’s life in each of the seasons of nature’s year. As Lancelot Andrewes observes, the sending of the Holy Spirit is really the alpha and omega of all our celebrations. Along with being special times for ordinations, they recall us to the purpose and meaning of the ministry: in the spring of Lent, in the summer of Whitsunday, in the Autumn, and now in winter, in Advent. For each, too, there is a special focus of spiritual intention. For Advent, it is Peace in the World which relates to the reading from Micah as the lesson along with the story of the Annunciation at the Gospel.
The lesson from Micah highlights the very powerful concept of “beat[ing] swords into ploughshares” and “spears into pruning hooks”, images of the transformation of the city at war into the city of peace, a peace which is ultimately found in our “go[ing] up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob” where “he shall teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” These are images which have their Homeric counterpart in the Shield of Achilles in the Iliad which depicts the city at peace and the city at war. The images here in Micah belong to the redemption of our humanity in our being restored to fellowship and life with God. It is very much about our learning the ways of God in whom alone we may find peace and joy.
It cannot be found simply in ourselves. We need these spiritual reminders precisely in the face of catastrophes and tragedies that we confront in our current war-torn world, a world of ‘the endless wars’, it seems, as the sad legacy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries especially. We confront the endless spectacle of humanitarian disasters and the horrors of war that is simply mind-numbing at the same time as we talk about world peace. How to think about such things? Only through prayer. Only through the sober and sombre reminder of the complexities and confusions of human sin and wickedness. Only through the radical message of Advent which counters all human presumption. The Advent Embertide calls to mind the message of Pentecost, namely that the human community and city has no unity in itself. Peace and unity can only be found in God and in God with us. Only through the co-inherence of our humanity with God and so with one another. Such is the burden of the story of the Annunciation tonight. For we, like Mary, are surely troubled in our hearts about the words we hear in the face of the world we experience.
Tonight we are providentially recalled to the essential coming of God to us in Jesus Christ. The story of the Annunciation marks the first moment of his Incarnation, his being with us in the intimacy of the humanity of Jesus Christ and Mary. The Incarnation is God made man, the Word made flesh. It has its radical beginning in the Annunciation which is Christ’s conception in the womb of Mary.
Her fiat mihi, her “be it unto me according to thy word” is the truest form of human activity. Her ‘yes’ to God is the truest meaning of Christian Faith, itself an echo of the word of the Son to the Father in the agony of Gethsemane and on the Cross. “Not my will but thine be done”. Everything is gathered into the motions of Trinitarian love which embrace and ground all our human loves.
There is nothing passive about the Annunciation. As the Lancelot Andrewes profoundly remarks in one of his nativity sermons, the Annunciation is her concipiet, not decipiet, her concipiet not recepiet; her conceiving and not her being deceived, her conceiving and not merely her receiving, that belongs to the mystery of the Incarnation. There is in this a strong sense of her active engagement with God’s will and purpose for our humanity. The Annunciation story counters the Gnosticism of Docetism, the idea that the Incarnation is just a kind of divine play-act, a mere seeming to be as opposed to the actual coming and being of God in the flesh. Concipiet – “thou shalt conceive in thy womb”.
The Advent Embertide Gospel of the Annunciation is shorter than the fuller account read at the Feast of the Annunciation. That latter account extends to Mary’s actual question to the Angel and to the ensuing exchange with the angel which ends with Mary’s “be it unto me according to thy word.” Here we have the angelic salutation and Mary’s being “troubled at this saying” and “cast[ing]in her mind what manner of salutation this should be?” to which the angel responds with the proclamation of the conception. “Fear not, Mary”, the Angel says to her unvoiced question, “for thou hast found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name Jesus.” It captures and anticipates the very celebration of Christmas. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us as Saviour and King, as the King of peace. The angel concludes: “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; And of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Powerful images that connect Christ with the Davidic kingship and to the hopes of Israel, the hopes for our humanity.
But it does not happen without human agency, the agency of Mary. It takes the form of a kind of wonder and of questioning. Mary is actively engaged, we might say, in terms of both soul and body. The conception of Christ in her womb, in utero, is the complement to the conception of Christ in her mind, in mentis.
All our Advent hopes and Advent blessings are found in the idea of God being with us. It requires our attention and active engagement with the Word of God coming to us in the mystery of Advent with all of its rich fullness. That active engagement has very much to do with the deep and true questions in our souls. Mary’s questioning in her mind is very much to the point. We are to be actively engaged in the task of understanding the meaning of the Word of God. It is the constant Marian task of the Church in her proclamation of the Word of God. It is fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding”, which can only happen through our engagement with what is heard and seen.
In that constant task of prayer and praise we find the true meaning of peace. It is found in God’s being with us through which we can begin to learn how the peace of God can rule in our own hearts and world. Our being troubled at the various sayings of Scripture leads to our questioning so as to begin to learn and understand. Such is the example of the wisdom of Mary.
“And she was troubled at this saying”
Fr. David Curry
Advent Embertide
Advent Programme II, 2022