The Announcement

Gospel: Luke 1: 26-38

So much art and homiletic on this feast runs afoul of the reality of the actual event itself.  Mary was a resident of a small, poor village, engaged to a poor laborer.  Yet, the art surrounding this scene has her in royal regalia in a palatial home.  Our homiletics often misses the real existential angst of a young woman being asked to bear a child not belonging to her betrothed.  Joseph accepting the child as his own spares Mary severe consequences.  Mary accepts real hardship in accepting this mission from God.

And yet this feast is not really about an event of many centuries ago.  It is about our own acceptance of the bearing of Christ within us.  God comes to each one of us, asking if we will bear the Christ within us and bring him forth into the world through deeds of mercy and loving kindness.  That announcement to us brings with it the same hardships and the same angst as it did for Mary in her own life.  For to bear Christ is to bear his cross as well.

It is for this reason that this feast often falls within the season of Lent, so near to the events of Holy Week.  If we accept the announcement of the angel in our lives, then we must accept the path of the cross this upcoming week.  Let us bear Christ within us, bringing him forth into the world through deeds of healing, liberation, and nourishing of others.  Let us bear the cross that accompanies him with patience and joy, forgiving our betrayers and persecutors and deniers as Jesus himself did.