Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation! This is the day when the Archangel Gabriel (whose name means "The Strength of God") trembled (!) to behold the Blessed Virgin Mary and announce to her God's invitation to become God's own Mother! What a mighty Mystery! And what a gift that it so often occurs in Lent, when we can understand that all of our Lenten disciplines and practices are preparing our hearts, minds, souls, bodies, to share with Our Lady one of her most precious titles: Theotokos, the God-Bearer.

There’s a reason why the Annunciation most frequently occurs in the midst of Lent. Our word “Lent” comes from an old English word that means “Spring,” and it was believed that not only was the world created in the springtime, but that since the mighty acts of Christ’s redemptive work were accomplished in the spring (the crucifixion and resurrection), so too the inauguration of those acts in the Incarnation must also be in the spring…which is to say: the New Creation, too, begins in the Spring. (There was also a belief that dying on the date of one’s conception was a Platonic sort of sign of perfection.) Hence it was understood that the original date of Christ’s crucifixion (believed to be 25 March, the old date of the vernal equinox) must also be the date of his conception…which had the upshot of setting his birthday, Christmas, nine months later on 25 December. The wood of the cross and the wood of the manger are one and the same, a reality on which our Office Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews expands in both cosmic and meta-cosmic directions.

The Letter also invites us, I believe, to live into that reality more consciously. The author writes, “Now in subjecting all things to [human beings], God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus.” Here we have one of the many dilemmas of living the life of faith: the knowledge that the work of redemption has been accomplished, but that the fullness of the revelation of that work has yet to be revealed in all its awesome glory. The Ruler of this World has indeed been cast out as Jesus says in John…yet it’s clear the world still suffers, people still sin, and the powers of evil so often appear to have the upper hand in our lives, relationships, families, communities…. And yet: the reality of the New Creation is present here and now, is available here and now, however dark the time. The cross and the manger are one. The invitation I think we’re being given on this feast and in this epistle is: will we be bearers of the New Creation to a world desperately in need of renewal? Will our lives be sites of the inbreaking love of God? Will God be visible in us so that the victory of Love over sin, of Life over death (even in the midst of the valley of death) can be announced with a defiantly holy cry of Alleluia? Will our lives be a living Alleluia, even in the midst of Lent? Will the joy of a New Creation be visible in us regardless of the circumstances in which we live?

Beloved, just as the archangel Gabriel approached Our Lady with an invitation to become the Mother of God, to become the Theotokos, the Church invites us today to be Theotokoi, to be God-bearers: to bear the hope of the Kingdom that is always already here, yet whose fullness has not been revealed; to bear a vision of the New Creation in Jesus Christ that even now is coming to be; to conceive the Word of God in our souls, in our own lives, so that Jesus Christ can shine in and through us, revealed in and through us; to receive the gift of new birth even as we bear the One from whom the new life comes!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+