Feast of the Annunciation
Today we celebrate one of the greatest feasts in the Church year, the Feast of the Annunciation. It is a feast that most people do not think much about. Sometimes when we talk about the Incarnation, we talk about Christmas. Today is the feast of the Incarnation. The word Incarnation means in the flesh. Jesus became flesh; he took on human flesh. In the womb of His mother on the day of the Annunciation, He took His human nature to Himself. So today is really the feast of the Incarnation.
Today we celebrate this incredible feast which is the reason that on Sundays, when we pray the Creed, we bow at those words: the Lord became incarnate in the Blessed Virgin Mary and He became man. Those are the words that we bow at, it is not at the crucifixion, but at the Incarnation. Today we also have to pray the Creed and we will kneel at those words because of the feast that we celebrate. We actually kneel at the words of the Incarnatus est. Today is a wonderful feast and you see the way that God set it up. The sign that is given through Isaiah, a sign that would be unmistakable.
A sign that is absolutely impossible. God asks Ahaz, "Ask for a sign. Make it as high as the sky or as deep as the netherworld. Anything you want. Make it as preposterous as it might seem." Ahaz, who is one of the worst kings they ever had in Israel, suddenly become Mr. Pious and says, "Oh no! I am not going to tempt God," as if he had not been for all these years that he had been king already. So God outdoes humanity as He always does and gives us a sign that is so ridiculous, so impossible, that it cannot be mistaken. And yet people still do not believe.
We hear about the Incarnation in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. We also hear about it in the Gospel of Saint Luke, which is the Gospel that we heard today. It is the angel Gabriel coming to Mary, one of the most beautiful scenes in history. The angel of the Lord coming down to ask permission from the lowliest human being that ever walked the face of the earth. She calls herself the maidservant of the Lord, the lowest of the low, and she is the one to whom the angel comes. He bows down before her and asks her, in humility, if she would be the Mother of God. What a beautiful scene. How beautiful is the humility of Our Lady. Think about being in that position and an angel came to ask you something. We’d like to think that we would be willing to say, "Whatever God wants, absolutely!" Just think if an angel of the Lord appeared to you. Gabriel is one of the seraphim, which means the fiery ones, so he is one of the most glorious ones. Our idea of an angel is this little figure that you can see through with nice wings and is cute. No, the angels are terrible to behold. They are not frightening, but terrible in the sense that they are glorious and on fire with the love of God. If this angel appeared to you, you would be filled with fear, with terror. And yet, Our Lady, in humility, said, "Let it be done to me according to Thy word." Ever since that moment, all of humanity has been grateful to her for her humility.
It is that humility that we really have to celebrate today. It is not only the humility of Our Lady, it is the humility of God. Think about that: God, who is the Creator of all, today became created. God, who made His mother, took humanity within His mother and from His mother. God, who is all-powerful, became today this little, tiny, microscopic zygote in His mother.
What a beautiful feast to think about and to pray about the humility of God and the humility of the most exalted human creature that God made, who calls herself the humble handmaiden of the Lord. For us, it is a lesson we must learn: to be humble. Saint Paul makes it clear in his letter to the Romans that "Sacrifice, oblation, and holocausts you neither desired nor delighted in; but a body you have given me." It is because of this feast that Our Lord was able to go to the Cross. He had a sacrifice to offer: Himself in His humanity.
So when we look at the Cross and consider the humility of the Lord, when we look at all the things that He did and consider His humility, it all comes back to today: the humility of almighty God taking on our human nature in the womb of the most humble human person ever. Therefore, it lays out the pattern for us. If we are to take up our cross and follow in His footsteps, it means first of all to be humble. We must pray for humility. We must accept what that prayer will bring because humility comes through humiliation. We do not like that very well, but no virtue is possible without humility. It is the foundation for all of the spiritual life.
If we want to grow in holiness, if we want to be like Jesus, we must be humble. Today, above all days, we see the humility of Jesus Christ, God made flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Note: Father Altier does not prepare his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.
2. The Wonderful Exchange
Tuesday March 25, 2003 Feast of the Annunciation Reading I (Isaiah 7:10-14) Reading II (Hebrews 10:4-10) Gospel (St. Luke 1:26-38)
Of all of the glorious feasts that we celebrate in the Church’s liturgical year, today is the top, because today is the day that we celebrate the Incarnation of the Word of God. Today is the day that we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ took on our human flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God entered our world in a human form on this day, in a form just like any of us entered the world, in a way that we were not even able to be recognized yet as being seen with the naked eye, but fully human nonetheless. And the fact that God Himself would condescend to take on our human nature is something which boggles the mind, and it will continue to do so for all eternity. It is a mystery upon which we will meditate forever. We will never tire of it and we will never finish, we will never exhaust it; there will always be more because it is an infinite mystery dealing with the nature of God Himself.
But we see that in order to be filled with this mystery, each one of us must learn from Jesus and Mary as we look at what happened on this day some 2,000 years ago. On this day, Our Lord totally emptied Himself. As Saint Paul tells the Philippians, “He took the form of a slave.” He put aside everything that was of the glory of God and hid it behind our human flesh. He remained God fully, and yet He was willing to become one of us, to be so humble, to put Himself aside to the point that He would descend in a human form – something which is infinitely beneath what He is – and take on our nature to Himself. But before He could do that, He also had to find the most amazing person He had ever created: this astoundingly beautiful woman who had also emptied herself perfectly and completely of herself, and had filled herself completely with Him. So as she set aside her humanity to be filled with His divinity, He set aside His divinity to be completely filled with her humanity. And there was this wonderful exchange that happened: God became Man, and a woman became the Mother of God.
But in this same exchange, she is our mother and we are members of Him. And so like our mother, we must also learn to empty ourselves entirely and we must be filled with Jesus Christ. It is an astounding mystery to think about the fact that Mary had so perfectly and completely emptied herself and filled herself so completely and perfectly with God, that God could become flesh in her, that He Who had made her in His image and likeness would now be created in her image and likeness, that He Who is the Creator would become created in her. Now this exchange continues to happen. The more that we are willing to die to ourselves and to put aside all of the weakness of our humanity, the more we can be filled with Christ. Like Mary, we will remain human; like Jesus, He remained divine; but each one took to Himself or herself that which was not His or hers by nature. Mary became divine, and Jesus became human.
The same mystery happens in each one of us. It has already happened on the day of Baptism where we took on the divine nature and were united to Christ. It continues every day when we receive Holy Communion. And for every single person who is in the state of grace there is that union of the human and the divine. Unlike Jesus, Whose union was a substantial one, ours is merely accidental, but it is a real union nonetheless. And we want that union to grow, to develop, and to become perfect so that we will become like Our Lady, that is, so perfectly conformed to the divinity of Christ that it will no longer be us who lives but Christ Who lives in us. Saint Paul could say that it was Christ living in him. No one could say it as perfectly as Our Lady, who had Christ physically living in Her. But each one of us, when we receive Holy Communion, receives Jesus Christ – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – into ourselves so that it is truly Christ living in us.
Now we need to take that out from here so that it is not just for those few moments that Christ is within us sacramentally, and it is not merely that He is within us because of the Indwelling of the Trinity because we are in the state of grace, but that our life becomes His and He lives his life in us and through us by perfect conformity to Him. So again, we will see that wonderful exchange that we celebrate today in the most astounding way, and something similar will happen to us: As we are conformed to Jesus Christ, He conforms Himself to us; we become Christ and He becomes us, as He lives in us and through us in our lives. And this glorious mystery of the Incarnation, which continues daily in the Eucharist, will also find its daily fulfillment in each one of us where we conform ourselves to Christ; we die to ourselves and empty ourselves of all that is human and take on all that is divine. The divinity of Christ will then work through our humanity and this wonderful exchange will continue: that God becomes Man, and man becomes God.
•This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.
Thank you, Our Blessed Mother.
Great stuff. I am so glad Archbishop Flynn gave this faithful priest nationwide attention.