Today’s gospel is a familiar part of the Christmas story – the Angel Gabriel inviting Mary into the plans of God for redemption and salvation of the world. I suspect we quickly want to jump the 9 months and have our thoughts move quickly to the Nativity of Jesus. But let us put things on “pause” for a moment and remember we are in the midst of Lent and in that vein let us reconsider this well-known story for this liturgical season.
The Annunciation is deeply part of the Church’s tradition of religious art. The scene of the Angel Gabriel and Mary has been interpreted by many great artists: Da Vinci, Rembrandt, El Greco and countless other artists and iconographers over the ages.
Part of the artistic tradition is that the scene of the Annunciation often portrays Mary, not empty-handed, but holding a book or a scroll, her reading and reflecting on Scripture being interrupted by the angel’s pronouncement. The tradition is that she is meditating on Isaiah 7 (today’s first reading) in which there is the promise that a virgin will bear a child.
Perhaps.
Or Perhaps she was reflecting on Isaiah 52:13-53:12, the Suffering Servant Song in which the prophet describes the one who will be so marred and disfigured that he will not even seem a man, yet this is the one who will atone for the sins of humanity. Or maybe she was reflecting on any number of passages – perhaps the same one Jesus will share with the disciples on the road to Emmaus in which all the prophets and Law point to the Messiah. Hard to say. We do know that she holds “all these things” in her heart and pondered what they all might mean – in and out of season.
What could it mean for you to know that a core, an intrinsic part of Mary is that she is a woman of the Word. A woman to whom the Word of God came through the message of an angel. A woman who let that Word of God form her life, give her life, and gave life to the Word of God among us.
Lent is a sacred time which begins with the words of Ash Wednesday: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” What could it mean to you to have Mary, a woman of the Word, be a model for your Lenten journey? What could it mean to have the Word of God come to you, form your life, and through you to give the newness of life to those in your sphere of daily life?
For example, yesterday, the reflection was on recognizing and giving voice, in all circumstances, to living gracefully – to be a grateful person seeing the hand of God in the ordinary. That came from reflecting on a story of Naaman. What might be your “take away” from reading the story of Ahaz and Isaiah? What about the second reading? “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me…behold, I come to do your will, O God.” This life, this corporal body, was given to us that we might do the will of God. Like Mary, hold that Word in your heart and muse about its meaning.
May we be people of the Word – our lives shaped, molded, and formed by God – so when life “announces” the joyful, the painful, and all the in-between, we are ready to say, “Be it done according to your Word.”
Image credit: “Annunciation” by Leonardo Da Vinci, Uffizi Museum, Florence | Public Domain