Today, churches all across the world celebrated the great feast of the Annunciation of the Lord.
The Good News of the Gospel started in earnest with the angelic salutation of Archangel Gabriel to a humble maiden called Mary, whose obedience made her the greatest among all of God’s creatures and thus worthy to become the Mother of the Incarnate God Himself, Jesus Christ.
The Annunciation is the single greatest news ever, perhaps second only to the proclamation of the empty tomb.
In these two events, as well as in the Nativity and the Passion of the Lord lies the brilliance and the genius of Christianity, its spectacular magnificence, the paradoxical principles at its heart which make it still, after two thousand years, a fresh and vibrant faith.
A distant, cold deity, far removed from the cares of its creatures, sitting triumphantly in its upper spheres, could be conceived by human mind. But only the infinite wisdom of God could conceive such an wondrous plan as the one brought about by the Gospel of Christ.
Only God could see the magnificent freedom expressed in the obedience shown both by Christ in His acceptance of the Father’s will and in Mother Mary’s loving reply to God’s calling.
Only God could turn the symbol of humiliation and scandal, the Cross into the only sign of victory over death and sin.
Only God could choose to show His power in a humble manger, in the wounds and lacerations caused by human cruelty and in the arms stretched out on the wood of the Holy Cross to reach the entire universe.
Only God could express His mercy for His beloved creatures in the most sublime of ways – not only by dwelling with them, but also by sharing their frailty, their sorrows and pain and by paying the price for their sins, since only God Himself could satisfy the justice of the Infinite One, bitterly offended and rejected with each human choice in favor of darkness.
And it is exactly because of these ideas, in such stark contrast to human notions of strength, that the truth of the divine origin of Christianity becomes apparent. To paraphrase a couple of great writers, Christianity is true because it makes sense, complete sense - but mostly from a divine point of view and not a merely human one.
It is beyond incredible to think of the significance of today’s feast – with the help of a humble maiden, the Creator entered His creation, the Eternal One entered time and the Infinite One chose to limit Himself to the helpless cries of a tiny baby.
In the Paschal mysteries that await us, we see how the King of all Kings allowed Himself to be humiliated and crushed for sake of His creatures, so no one could claim that God was a cold, distant stranger, unfamiliar with our sorrows and trials.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and IS always with us, because He is Immanuel.
