Midweek Morning Meditation -- The Announcement of the Incarnation

Source: annunciationsac.org

"Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to your will." (Lk. 1:38)

Today, March 25, is the Feast of the Annunciation to the Most Holy Theotokos. This great feast always falls during Great Lent, and when it falls on a weekday, it is the only instance of having the full eucharistic Liturgy served for its commemoration (the Vesperal Liturgy will be served this evening at 6:00 p.m). Clearly a sign of the feast’s significance. Thus, the Annunciation is something of a festal interlude that punctuates the eucharistic austerity of the lenten season. Yet, because it does occur during Great Lent, this magnificent feast appears and disappears rather abruptly. It seems as if we have just changed the lenten colors in church to the blue characteristic of feasts dedicated to the Theotokos, when they are immediately changed back again! This is so because the Leavetaking of the Annunciation is on March 26. If we are not alert, it can pass swiftly by undetected by our “spiritual radar” which needs to be operative on a daily basis.

This Feast has its roots in the biblical passage in St. Luke’s Gospel, wherein the evangelist narrates that incredibly refined dialogue between the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary (LK. 1:26-38). The angel Gabriel will “announce” the joyful news of the impending birth of the Messiah, and hence our English name of “Annunciation” for the Feast. However, the Greek title of Evangelismos is even richer in that it captures the truth that the Gospel – evangelion – is being “announced” in the encounter between God’s messenger and the young maiden destined to be the Mother of God. Her “overshadowing” by the Holy Spirit is “Good News” for her and for the entire world! Even though the Feast of the Lord’s Nativity in the flesh dominates our ecclesial and cultural consciousness, it is this Feast of the Annunciation that reveals the Incarnation, or the “becoming flesh” of the eternal Word of God. It is the Word’s conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary that is the “moment” of the Word’s enfleshment. Hence, the Church’s insistence that a new human being begins to exist at the moment of conception. The Word made flesh – our Lord Jesus Christ – will be born nine months later on December 25 according to our liturgical calendar; but again, His very conception is the beginning of His human life as God-made-man. The troparion of the Feast captures this well:

Today is the beginning of our salvation; the revelation of the eternal Mystery! 
The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin as Gabriel announces the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos: Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with you.

Was the Virgin Mary randomly chosen for this awesome role? Was she compelled to fulfill the will of God regardless of her spiritual relationship with God? Was she a mere instrument overwhelmed or even “used” by God for the sake of God’s eternal purpose? That the Virgin Mary was “hailed” as one “highly favored” or “full of grace” (Gk. kecharitōmenē) when the angel Gabriel first descended to her, points us well beyond any such utilitarian role for her. On the contrary, the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary is understood and presented by the Church as the supreme example of synergy in the Holy Scriptures. The word synergy denotes the harmonious combination and balance between divine grace and human freedom that can occur between God and human beings. God does not compel, but seeks our free cooperation to be a “co-worker” with God in the process of salvation and deification. In this way, God respects our human self-determination, or what we refer to as our freedom or “free will.” It is the Virgin Mary’s free assent to accept the unique vocation that was chosen for her from all eternity that allows her to become the Theotokos, or God-bearer. This is, of course, found in her response to the angel Gabriel’s announcement, and following her own perplexity:  “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” This teaching on synergy finds its classical expression in a justifiably famous passage from St. Nicholas Cabasilas’ Homily on the Annunciation. The passage itself is often cited as an excellent and eloquent expression of the Orthodox understanding of synergy: 

The incarnation of the Word was not only the work of the Father, Son and Spirit – the first consenting, the second descending, and third overshadowing – but it was also the work of the will and faith of the Virgin. Without the three divine persons this design could not have been set in motion; but likewise the plan could not have been carried into effect without the consent and faith of the all-pure Virgin. Only after teaching and persuading her does God make her his Mother and receive from her the flesh which she consciously wills to offer him. Just as he was conceived by his own free choice, so in the same way she became his Mother voluntarily and with her free consent.

We praise the Virgin Mary as representing our longing for God and for fulfilling her destiny so that we may receive the gift of salvation from our Lord who “came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man” (Nicene Creed):

Hail, thou who art full of grace: the Lord is with thee.

Hail, O pure Virgin;

Hail, O Bride unwedded

Hail, Mother of life: blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

(Dogmatikon, Vespers of the Annunciation)

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We have a remarkably rich resource page for this Feast on our parish website. It is a veritable feast in itself of homilies - from the Fathers or contemporary Orthodox theologians - that bring to mind the riches of the Annunciation. As we are home most of the time, please avail yourselves of some of this rich material.

https://www.christthesavioroca.org/annunciation

Coffee With Sister Vassa -- THE INTRIGUING NUMBER 17

 

The number 17 has special meaning in the Bible and in certain Lives of the Saints, like Mary of Egypt and Alexios the Man of God. It consists of the number 10, signifying perfect order (and it’s easiest to order or count things in groups of 10, not only because we have ten fingers on our hands), and the number 7, signifying completion (of something either bad or good) and/or complete victory. Thus, Joseph was 17 years old when he was sold into slavery in Egypt, completing the childhood years he had spent at home; The Great Flood in Noah’s time began on the 17th day of the second month, putting an end to the wickedness of the rest of humanity; Noah’s Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month; and Jesus Christ is often interpreted to have resurrected from the Tomb on 17 Nisan, completing His victory over death.

In the Life of St. Mary of Egypt: 1. She spends 17 years as a sex-addict in Alexandria (and on that 17th year, she goes to Jerusalem and experiences conversion); and 2. She then spends 17 years in the desert ‘ in constant danger,’ battling her passions, until she attains peace, after which she lives for another 30 years in the desert until Zosimas discovers her there. I also noticed recently that another saint, Alexios the Man of God, celebrated on March 17 on the Orthodox church-calendar and on July 17 on the Roman Catholic church-calendar, also has other significant 17’s in his story: 1. Alexios spent 17 years in fasting & prayer in Edessa in Syria, after he secretly left home; and 2. He then returned home and spent a further 17 years under the stairs of his parents’ home, until his death.

All-of-the-above helps to read and interpret the little symbolic details of traditioned texts, like the Lives of the Saints. The 17-year periods in the abovementioned lives are the periods in which something in them was brought to completion; was overcome. And then came the next 17-year phase, when something else still needed to be worked on, either in themselves or in others, or both. In the case of Alexios the Man of God it is most intriguing, because one wonders, why in the world he returned home, specifically to his childhood home. But the number 17 does give us a clue, that he needed to work on something unresolved, un-healed, between him and his family, to which he ministered, in a way, during the time he was under the stairs. They didn’t have the eyes to ‘see’ or recognize him for who he was, until he died, probably because they could only see him in the role they expected of him, to be their son or (in the case of his wife) her husband. But they did nourish him from their table, as a beggar, which was a strange way in which they did share a certain kind of communion, and extended their hearts to a beggar, in ways that they could not to their son/husband, insofar as he was not meeting their expectations.

Anyway, Happy Tuesday of the Fifth Week! ❤

Lenten Meditation -- Fifth Monday of Great Lent

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

 How Shall We Escape, If We Neglect So Great a Salvation? (Hebrews 2.3)

Who will give us back this present time if we waste it? ...We are not yet perfect, but at least we desire to be so, and this is the beginning of our salvation...someone wanting to acquire the spiritual craft must not interest himself in anything else but, day and night, attend to it...unless a man drives himself and fights against his evil inclinations he readily falls away and diverges from the path of virtues.

—St Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses, X: On Traveling the Way of God, as found inThe Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox

Coffee With Sister Vassa -- WHY “FEAR” GOD?

 “In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and he leaves his children a support. The commandment of the Lord is a fountain of life; and it causes men to turn aside from the snare of death.” (Prov 14: 26-27, Septuagint-translation)

“Fear” is a life-giving, God-given gift, essential for survival. It is an evolved capacity in the human being, so science tells us. But like other God-given gifts and drives, which I inherently have as a human being, fear becomes harmful to me when it is divorced from God; when it is not “ of God” and takes on a life of its own. Inherent, human fear in a life not God-focused is crippling, existential anxiety in the face of the many uncertainties and ambivalences that are part-and-parcel of any human life.

“ In the fear of the Lord,” I am reminded as I begin the fifth week of Lent, “is strong confidence.” I “fear” losing my connection with Him and focus on Him, the Source of love, wisdom, and forgiveness of my sins, and this “ fear of the Lord” liberates me from merely-human fears, of financial insecurity, of human opinion, of loneliness, and so on. “ I walk the line” He sets out before me today, in the situations, work, and relationships I am given in my particular vocation, or “ commandment of the Lord.” So let me do the next right thing today, according to His call, – that is, according to my immediate responsibilities. Let my vocation be what it is meant to betoday, “ a fountain of life,” which causes me “ to turn aside from the snare of death.”

Lenten Meditation -- Fourth Sunday of Great Lent, St. John Climacus

 

Source: legacyicons.com

He who has lost sensibility is … a self-contradictory windbag, a blind man who teaches others to see. He talks about healing a wound, and does not stop irritating it. He complains of sickness, and does not stop eating what is harmful. … He philosophizes about death, but he behaves as if he were immortal. … He talks of temperance and self-control, but he lives for gluttony. … He reads about vainglory, and is vainglorious while actually reading it. He repeats what he has learnt about vigil, and drops asleep on the spot. He praises prayer, but runs from it as from the plague. He blesses obedience, but he is the first to disobey. He praises detachment, but he is not ashamed to be spiteful and to fight for a rag. When angered, he gets bitter. … He looks people in the face with passion, and talks about chastity. … All the time he is his own accuser, and he does not want to come to his senses–I will not say cannot.

—St. John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, as found in The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox