Homily, 4-8-24; Feast of the Annunciation:
“‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.”
And so it begins. With Mary’s fiat we begin the journey from Jesus’ human conception to his Passion, to his Resurrection, and to His Ascension to return to His father. And we should consider all the events along the way.
We all understand the idea of time. Time marches forward in a linear fashion; we can’t go backwards. But we also have the liturgical year with its cycle of Advent, Christmas Season, Lent, Easter Season and of course Ordinary time. While I was in the seminary, I was introduced to the idea of liturgical time as a spiral. Each liturgical year doesn’t end back where it started. It ends a year forward in time. Time moves forward, but as a spiral as we commemorate the events of Jesus’ life over and over again.
At each Mass, Christ’ sacrifice is made present. There is a “here and now” about our liturgy. We offer anew Christ’s sacrifice each time Mass is said. It’s much the same way when we celebrate the anniversary of sacred feasts. We make them present to us today. We celebrate them as an anniversary of an event that happened 2000 years ago, but at the same time as if they were occurring today. Today we celebrate the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would be the Mother of God 2025 years ago, and we also celebrate it as if it is occurring today. Today Jesus is made present in the womb of Mary to begin his 33-year journey, along a spiral of time, to His cross and Resurrection that some of you will ultimately celebrate in the year 2058. The Easter we just celebrated last week, effectively began when we celebrated the Annunciation back in 1990.
It is a different way of looking at Jesus’ life which might seem confusing at first, but can give us a better appreciation of the entirety of His life. We compress all our liturgical celebrations into one year, but we can tend to forget all the parts of Christ’s life that were not eventful. We skip from His infancy to His being lost in the Temple and then skip again to His public ministry. We can tend to ignore the years when He grew in wisdom and understanding in the care of Mary and Joseph. We can forget the entirety of Mary’s role. She was not just a mother who gave Him life. She was a mother who cared for Him, guided Him, and ultimately suffered with Him. Along with St. Joseph, she kept Jesus hidden from Satan. I read an interesting blog article recently in which the author claims that this is the reason St. Joseph is considered the terror of demons. St. Joseph deceived Satan by hiding the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin. Joseph kept Jesus hidden until he died when Jesus was 30 years old. And then Jesus started His public ministry.
We celebrate the major events of salvation history, but let us not forget the ordinary times that occurred over a span of almost 34 years. These are times we can relate to in our own lives as fathers and mothers, as sons and daughters; times in our lives which sometimes can seem so very ordinary and uneventful. Let us honor Mary today for her special role in salvation. Let us strive to be holy, to be full of grace, to say yes to God’s will as she did. But let us not forget to also imitate her everyday life in selfless service to Jesus from conception to death. Let us strive to serve Jesus, present in all of all His brothers and sisters, in all the activities of our everyday lives.