The Annunciation, Sandro Botticelli, 1489-1490.
Fr. Z says this is one of his favorite images of the Annunciation, and it is lovely and says so many things. My reservation is that the artist had Mary looking at least twice her age at the time (15 or 16), and the angel too looks old...
March 25 has been observed primarily as the Feast of the Annunciation, being roughly nine months from the Feast of the Lord's Nativity on December 25. I have not checked to find out why it has never been popularly called the Feast of the Incarnation because the Annunciation to Mary also marked the conception in her of Jesus the man. Father Z had two beautiful reflections yesterday on this feast...
Lady Day - The very feast of the Incarnation
Sometimes in the history of our salvation the stars line up to portend amazing events. These stellar alignments are sometimes literally stellar, as in the case of the Star of Bethlehem. I, for one, buy the arguments for the Star (which also concerns what lined up with your planet’s yellow star on that first Good Friday).
[Fr Z provides the link to that reference: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2017/01/oldie-post-what-was-the-star-of-bethlehem/
Years line up, too. Take the curious situation we face this year, when many portentous anniversaries are coincident. It’s a bit unnerving.
But I digress. This is about Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation. This is the day when we celebrate the moment of the Incarnation. Mary says her “Fiat” and the Eternal Word takes our humanity into an indestructible bond with His divinity. From the instant of His conception, nothing would ever be the same again. And so we celebrate 25 March – nine months before the Feast of the Nativity – with great attention.
This is the day there occurred
that which drives us of the Roman Rite to our knees with great frequency. [Apparently the current Vicar of Christ on earth has exempted himself from all that - i mean, if he cannot even genuflect when he is consecrating the body and Blood of our Lord at Mass...]
In our traditional liturgical practice, we take a knee every time in the Last Gospel of Mass Father says:
et verbum caro factum est… and the Word was made flesh.
[I have particularly loved the inspired idea of saying the prolog to John's Gospel to end the traditional Mass - to remind us at the end of this commemoration of Jesus's supreme sacrifice that the story of Christian redemption it all began when "the Word was made flesh".]
We genuflect every time we sing in the Creed:
et homo factus est… and he was made man. The Son, consubstantial with the Father from before creation, becomes consubstantial with His human Mother, with our humanity in the instant of the Incarnation after the Annunciatory Archangel’s announcement to Mary Annunciate that she would conceive… if she agreed.
One gets the impression that God gives us clues in the mighty whirling clock of the heavens. After all, God knows how to do this stuff. Had there been tiny variations in strong and weak nuclear forces in the fractions of a second after the beginning of material creation, if the Big Bang Theory is correct, and we wouldn’t be here. God is precise. His precision in creation suggests that we should pay close attention to the celestial signs He puts in front of and above our faces.
It was the very moment when the “fullness of time” began.
How much did hang upon that momentary meeting?
The 25th of March has, through history, has been considered the most important day of the year. In ancient times it was thought that many events critical for our salvation took place on this same date. Augustine posited that that Christ’s Incarnation, His Conception, as well as His Crucifixion, His Death, was on 25 March. They also thought that God’s “Day of Rest”, the Eighth Day after Creation was 25 March. Moreover, the Hebrews crossing of the Red Sea (death and resurrection, the fall of man and his rising in baptism) and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (the two-fold prefiguring of Christ, priest and victim in one Person, ascending the hill to the altar/Cross) were on, yes, 25 March.
In other news, on this day, Frodo and Sam reached Mount Doom. You know what happened next.
One gets the impression that God gives us clues in the mighty whirling clock of the heavens. After all, God knows how to do this stuff. Had there been tiny variations in strong and weak nuclear forces in the fractions of a second after the beginning of material creation, if the Big Bang Theory is correct, then we wouldn’t be here. God is precise. His precision in creation suggests that we should pay close attention to the celestial signs – and calendrical coincidences – which He graciously puts in front of and above our faces.
Earlier in the day, he posted this:
Lady Day: The very Feast of the Incarnation
Posted on 25 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
This is the very Feast of the Incarnation.
Today we celebrate that moment when our Lord elevated our humanity by taking our human nature into an indestructible bond with His Divinity.
In the Incarnation God opened for us the path to our “divinization”: His sharing of something of His own divine glory with us in the eternal happiness of heaven.
In the sin of our First Parents the whole human race sinned. In justice, therefore, a human being had to correct the offense. However, such a correction was entirely impossible for a mere mortal human. Such a correction required the intervention of one who was both man and God.
In the Incarnation, the Word made flesh – made man – Jesus the Lord and Savior not only begins to save us from our sins in His earthly ministry, but begins also the mysterious revelation of man more fully to himself
(cf. GS 22).
Part of the Lord’s mission was also to teach man more fully who He is in the beauty of His own Person. However, He did not begin to do this only from the beginning of His public ministry. He began this from the very moment of the Incarnation.
Remember: From the instant of His conception, the Word made flesh begins to teach man more fully who man is.
Light from Light sheds light on the dignity of man, God’s image, from the instant of conception, from man’s humblest beginning.
Here are the Collects for this beautiful Feast of the Annunciation, Lady Day. Here are the “Opening Prayers” from both the older, traditional, Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and the newer, post-Conciliar, Ordinary Form.
COLLECT (1962MR) 9EF):
Deus, qui de beatae Mariae Virginis utero Verbum tuum, Angelo nuntiante, carnem suscipere voluisti: praesta supplicibus tuis; ut, qui vere eam Genetricem Dei credimus, eius apud te intercessionibus adiuvemur.
LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who desired Your Word to take flesh from the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary the angel announcing it: grant to your supplicants; that we who believe truly in the Mother of God, may be helped in Your sight by her intercessions.
COLLECT (2002MR) (OF]:
Deus, qui Verbum tuum in utero Virginis Mariae
veritatem carnis humanae suscipere voluisti,
concede, quaesumus,
ut, qui Redemptorem nostrum
Deum et hominem confitemur,
ipsius etiam divinae naturae mereamur esse consortes.
LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who wanted Your Word to take up
the truth of human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
grant, we beseech,
that we, who confess our Redeemer to be God and man,
may also merit to be the sharers of His divine nature.
NEW CORRECTED ICEL VERSION:
O God, who willed that your Word
should take on the reality of human flesh
in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
grant, we pray,
that we, who confess our Redeemer to be God and man,
may merit to become partakers even in his divine nature.[/dim
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/04/2017 00:13]