Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord |
| Luke 1:26–38 |
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and announces that she will conceive the Messiah. Mary, understandably surprised, asks, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” to which the angel replies, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” The virginity of the mother of Christ is fitting for a number of reasons. First, it indicates, as clearly as possible, that God is involved in the coming to be of Jesus. Though human cooperation, at both the physical and moral level, is required, the Incarnation would not have happened without a gracious divine initiative. Further, it signals that the Incarnation involves not simply a revolution in the moral and spiritual order but an entirely new creation. Just as Adam, on the biblical telling, is made through the direct causality of God, so the New Adam is made de novo, and not in the ordinary course. Finally, the virginity of Mary is a sign of the purity and completeness of her devotion to God, making her a fit vessel for the divine Messiah. She becomes mother in the physical order, though she is given utterly over to God; she is, as classical Christian piety would have it, spouse of the Holy Spirit. All of this, one might argue, is summed up in the greeting that the angel gives Mary at the Annunciation, the most sublime offered to any human being in the biblical tradition: kecharitomene, “full of grace.” Bishop Robert Barron |
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