The Annunciation 2018 FIAMC

‘Let what you have said be done to me’ (Lk 1:38)

The Nazareth Context
The most momentous event in the history of the world is presented by St.Luke in seemingly the most banal of all possible places, in the most banal of all possible circumstances. He tells us nothing of the family and back-ground of the young girl. He tells us nothing of the family and background of the other person principally involved, Joseph. But his purpose is not banal. He gave a brief introduction as to why he was writing his account to Theophilus- ‘so that you may know the truth of the things of which you have been informed’ (1:4; Acts 1:1). He has an incomparable story to tell. And he is a consummate artist in telling it. He includes geography and history, and connections and evocations. There is the Jewish world with its kings and priests, and the Roman world with its emperors and legates. This is not the world of fairyland and never-never. It is a world of history, a world of power, of importance and purpose. If Nazareth is a geographical and social backwater it does, however, belong to a network of connections, with political and social and religious realism. The young girl at the heart of this story lived in that world with all its immediacy, even if she could not have been conscious of it. St. Luke wants his readers to see in her a perfect exemplar of believing fidelity in the face of all the overwhelming difficulties. And that belief is all embracing, because of the Son she will conceive and bear. Luke will develop all of this still further in his second volume The Acts of the Apostles- it finishes as a major story of success, with the Gospel preached at the heart of the empire, in Rome itself, and to the ends of the earth.

What Mary Heard
Luke, the stylist, follows the patterns of annunciations found in the Old Testament (e.g. Judges 13:3ff.). The hearer receives specific directions and promises. ‘You must call his name Jesus. He will be Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will rule over the House of Jacob for ever. His reign will have no end’. Following this typical style, Luke portrays Mary as a person who asks a legitimate question. ‘How can this happen? I am not married’- she expresses the implied fear of deception and illusion characteristic of any normal person. Then her instant reply to the divine reassurance is absolute obedience. The rest is history, the beginning of the history of the rest of the world.

The Way It Worked Out.
Mary, like every mother, would have wondered about the future of her child. There is the mix of joy and sorrow, of delight and frustration. Her Son had a private persona, the hidden years, and and a public persona. The magnificent entry to Jerusalem and the frightful death on Golgotha. There was his and her private grief at the end of the public adulation. Then an appearance in the Upper Room, followed by silence. A Lady wrapped in silence. With a few lines the mother’s role was played out to the full.

Ordinary Experience
This presentation by Luke strikes a note in the lives of most of us, whether married or celibate? We too make the journey of discipleship, so like Mary’s. Jesus stood for what was good in a world that always found him too demanding. People might say that too much was asked of Mary who was simply too young for it. She was a girl in a world that was hard for women, and she of no social importance. How was she to know in any realistic sense that the Son she brought into the world ‘was the Word that was with God from the beginning and was God’ (Jn 1:1-2)? But the New Testament unapologetically retains its realism. It never said that she did know all the entailments involved in this exacting faith journey. She was not asked to think it over and take informed counselling; she was expected to be faithful. The parameters of what was right were clear. God had spoken through his angel. Luke says that it was no myth. Humility and simplicity are not strange bedfellows. Understanding is not the prerogative of the erudite.

Implications
The message is loud and clear. All believers are invited to say ‘yes’ to what is good, and ‘no’ to what is not. When clever people say that it is often too hard to know the difference they talk sincerely. However, the answer to major problems, while often the easiest, is not necessarily the best. The worst consequences are nearly always foreseen in taking the easy way out- and should be avoided at all costs. Often people expressing themselves thus act without the security of a believing community with all its checks and balances, its expertise and humility, its authority and compassion. Sincerity acknowledges complexity and faith is not in denial of it. But faith has its guides to help its reasoning. And Mary had her loving Son until the end.

What Mary was asked to take on was infinitely mysterious and never fully comprehensible. Analogously all motherhood is so if respectfully en-visaged. It accepts the future as mysterious, and totally in the hands of God. This is a happier way of thinking than the anaesthetised language of “early termination” should there be a natal difficulty, or describing the distressing despair expressed in taking one’s own life as “Dying with Dignity”.

Conclusion
The Son of God, Jesus the Christ from Nazareth, called Mary ‘Mother’. He entrusted her to the Beloved Disciple as ‘your’ Mother (Jn 19:27). Ever since then for us believers she is our Blessed Mother. To help us ‘experience’ her beauty today, on this the feast of the Annunciation, we might listen to some wonderful rendition of Ave Maria. What we cannot express with words we can with art, and enter better into the mystery so prayerfully and joyfully conveyed. If our commitment has a corresponding depth, we have got it entirely right: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. A very happy feast to you all. Amen.

Fr Richard J.Taylor

* Picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Ossawa_Tanner_-_The_Annunciation.jpg