Fr Matthew Reese

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.“
—Luke 1:26

Dear Friends,

Thanks be to God for the mystery of the Incarnation. Thanks be to God that Mary said yes.

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It commemorates an encounter that fundamentally altered the course of human history—an encounter which ushered in a New Covenant in Christ Jesus.

There is a reason that almost all angelic appearances in the Bible begin with “fear not,” “do not be afraid.”

If the revelations of Ezekiel and John of Patmos are anything to go on, angels are truly awesome figures in the traditional meaning of that word. With burning wheels and many faces, they are utterly unlike anything of this world.

And this angel, Gabriel, has come down to tell a simple girl that she will bear the Son of God. “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

Mary’s response echoes down through the ages, remembered by millions of Christians every day in the Angelus: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Mary’s answer to God’s call is the first act in a story that will bring about the redemption of the world.

Mary’s answer to God’s call is a leap of extraordinary faith—in the face of untold obstacles, historical, social, personal: an as-of-yet unwed girl, of a long-dispossessed royal line, in an occupied land, visited upon by an otherworldly creature so marvelous and fearsome that the greatest prophets have quaked at its sight.

And yet she does not quake.

When, shortly later, she visits Elizabeth, Mary gives us a song of such simplicity, such beauty, and such hope, that it summarizes the whole of God’s promise for us. “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.”

In taking on our human nature from Mary, His mother, Jesus takes on the totality of our human experience and transforms it. In suffering, he redeems our suffering. In dying, he destroys death.

But the savior of the world begins his earthly pilgrimage here, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.

Thanks be to God for that. So today of all days let us say,

Mary, pray for us.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew