Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

Lectionary: 545
First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings,
holocausts and sin offerings,
you neither desired nor delighted in.”
These are offered according to the law.
Then he says, “Behold, I come to do your will.”
He takes away the first to establish the second.
By this “will,” we have been consecrated
through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Because March 25, the feast of the Annunciation which anticipates Christmas by nine months, fell during Holy Week this year, the Church postpones the celebration for two weeks, until the Octave of Easter has passed.

We can neither cancel it nor permit it to disturb the majestic process of the days before and after Easter, so we postpone it till today.

The English poet John Donne pondered the occasion when Good Friday fell on March 25, 1608 in his poem, THE ANNUNCIATION AND PASSION, to wonderful effect:

"This Church by letting those days join, hath shownDeath and conception in mankind is one ;Or 'twas in Him the same humility...."

With this exercise the Church reveals that humility which cannot dismiss God's word even when it seems somewhat inconvenient. Although our calendar demands the celebration of Easter, it also wants the Annunciation, so we'll manage to do both.

I am reminded of the sacred authors who redacted the scriptures. When they discovered contradictory texts they didn't attempt to iron out the differences; they let them stand juxtaposed. So Noah loaded a male and female of each species on his ark, as everyone knows. But he also boarded seven pairs of "clean" animals into the craft. Does that seem contradictory? Only to the literalist. Our sacred texts are too holy to be manipulated by lowly scribes.

For that reason the Church rejected Marcion's bowdlerizing of the four gospels. Did both criminals crucified with Jesus mock him as Saint Matthew says? Or did one speak kindly to him as Saint Luke tells us? The truths of both texts are deep and important; we cannot permit a well-intentioned editor to simplify it for us.

The worse editor, of course, was the American Thomas Jefferson who deleted ninety percent of the Bible to make it conform to his Enlightened principles.
And so, today, we pause in our Easter celebration to remember the conception of Jesus and our enormous gratitude to the Virgin who welcomed him.

If anyone can teach us about Jesus, it is she who gave him birth, changed his diapers, gave him suckle, and taught the boy his prayers -- even as she worshiped him. She and Joseph taught God how to be a human being.

He was an eager learner. The Passion and Death of Jesus reveal how well they did. Even when he was tortured, mocked and murdered he could not betray their principles of love and forgiveness. He had seen the purity and goodness of our human nature in Mary; nothing could persuade him that we are irredeemable.

In the middle of this Easter season it is good to remember his humble beginnings in the obscurity of Nazareth. The Son of Mary is the Son of God; he has earned our worship; and she, our love.