A PRAYER AND REFLECTIONS ON THE ANNUNCIATION

I’d like to start off this essay with a brief prayer about the Annunciation:

O Blessed Mother Mary, your assent to become the mother of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, through the power and working of the Holy Spirit, can inspire each of us in our own way to imitate your Fiat, the “yes” you gave God for such an essential task for our salvation. Help each of us to imitate you in saying "yes" to our Lord’s requests from us, especially in those times when we feel most lost, anxious and lacking in trust in Him. Indeed may thinking about your Fiat inspire each of us each day to have that interior disposition to be receptive to the divine inspirations and promptings Jesus wishes to give us with His grace. Amen.

The Annunciation is the first of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. It sets a wonderful tone for us to meditate in that great prayer not just on Jesus and Mary, but on ourselves and our own spiritual journeys as well!

Mary is more than ready and willing to give us much needed grace to say “yes” to our Lord’s entreaties to trustfully follow Him in ways, as with her in the Annunciation, that we might not be able to understand at first.

You might have seen, in more than a few renditions of this extraordinary event in artwork, Mary looking either demure or even startled and unsettled as shown as in this great painting by Carl Bloch above when the Archangel Gabriel suddenly appears to tell her she is to be the Mother of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Imagine the scene, as set for us in a great very readable compendium of church approved private revelations entitled The Life of Mary as Seen by the Mystics compiled by Raphael Brown, first about the Archangel Gabriel who was the special messenger of the great news:

Gabriel descended from the highest heaven…His appearance was that of an exceedingly handsome young man with wavy blond hair, and his bright features radiated a divine light. His whole bearing was pleasing, yet also godlike and majestic. He wore a rich diadem on his head and a cross on his breast, and his vestments glowed in various striking colors.

(As a quick aside, can you imagine what Hollywood could do to bring a marvelous scene like this to life with the special effects available nowadays? Unfortunately, too many producers seem to be quite squeamish about religious movies these days!)

Directing his flight toward Nazareth in Galilee, Gabriel arrived at Mary’s modest little cottage as night was falling, when as usual she retired to pray in her small, bare room.

Taking a low narrow table on which was a roll of scriptural writings, Mary placed it in the center of the room…. she began to pray for the coming of the Saviour.

As Mary herself would later relate: “That night I prostrated myself devoutly in prayer, and with the most intense love I begged the Lord that He might deign to let me live long enough to see His Mother with my eyes, serve her with my hands, bow my head before her in reverence, and place myself completely at her service.”

Imagine that! Mary praying that she might help the Mother of the Messiah rather than praying to be her! And always wanting to serve rather than to be served!

Yet Mary was so filled with humility that she was at first quite taken aback by Gabriel’s famous greeting that followed shortly afterwards. And yet while she was filled with grace her humility caused her to feel “greatly troubled” (Luke 1:29) by this splendid looking angel suddenly appearing out of nowhere!

Mary continues in Brown's account:

And he [that is Gabriel] said to me: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women!” When I heard this greeting, at first I was indeed very frightened, for I wondered whether it might be an illusion. I asked myself what it might mean and why he uttered such a greeting because I knew and considered myself unworthy of it or of anything good, although I realized that nothing was impossible with Almighty God.

I still did not believe myself worthy. And so I did not ask the Angel why or when, but I asked how it could happen that my unworthy self should become the Mother of God:

“How shall this happen, since I do not know man?”

Considering that famous Scriptural reference from Luke’s Gospel Chapter 1 Verse 34, Brown relates here that

At the same time Mary interiorly mentioned to the Lord her vow of perpetual chastity and the mystical espousal that He had celebrated with her.

But now, to continue:

And Gabriel answered: “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore the Holy One to be born shall be called the Son of God.—And behold, Elizabeth thy kinswoman also has conceived a son in her old age, and she who was barren is now in her sixth month...” And the Angel answered me as I had said to myself: “...For nothing shall be impossible with God.”

For Mary that was the turnaround as she further relates:

After I heard these words, without doubting at all that what he said was true, I felt in my heart an exceedingly fervent desire to be the Mother of God. I prostrated myself on the ground, and on my knees, with my hands joined, I worshipped God, and my soul cried forth with love: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord—Be it done to me according to thy word!”

As Raphael Brown further notes in his book about the Annunciation, “The Blessed Virgin said to St. Elizabeth of Schoenau [whose private revelations were part of his source material]: “Do you know why God did this? Because I had believed in Him and because I had humbled myself.”

So once Mary realizes this as being God’s Will she graciously and willingly accepts it! And she shows her great trust in God to take care of her in this extraordinary situation! There’s no response such as “oh no, it can’t be me, I cannot be worthy of such an honor, find someone else.”

Mary’s love and devotion to God impels her to go “with haste” to help her cousin Elizabeth, as we read about in Luke’s Gospel Chapter 1 Verse 39. While she feels prayerful gratitude about this great honor she has been shown, she has no time for naval gazing!

Again, Mary is so closely united to the Lord in her humility that she is overflowing with love for Him in grace and gratitude. She finds great joy in being His truly humble servant! Service means everything to Mary!

And as St. Alphonsus Liguori points out in his classic work The Glories of Mary “Blessed Albert the Great asserts, that ‘to be the Mother of God is the highest dignity after that of being God’”.

As her Divine Son Jesus would later say in both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt 23:12).

We are all indeed quite Blessed to have a Blessed Mother given to us by our Lord Himself while He was on the Cross at Calvary. When He told Mary “Woman, behold your son” and then St. John, “Son, behold your mother” (John 19:26-27) Mary was to be our Spiritual Mother as well!

And being so immensely filled with grace, more than any other human being, she was and still is filled entirely with her love of God and an ardent desire to be of service to all of us in fallen humanity.

In her numerous church approved apparitions we see her pleading with us in one form or another to follow her Divine Son in loving obedience, echoing what we might call her motto in her last words in the Gospels: “Do whatever He [that is, Jesus] tells you" (John 2:5).

Nowadays, it’s all too easy to feel uncertain or adrift in a world where more and more people seem to have taken leave of their senses. A world in which, not coincidentally, our church seems mired in a feeble attempt to “keep up with the times”, however secular or apostatic they may be.

This is all the more reason to pray to our Lord and our Blessed Mother in prayers such as the Rosary, or just simply saying a few "Hail Mary’s” during the course of a trying day asking for her assistance to help you cope.

Think also perhaps of saying these great words inscribed on the Miraculous Medal:“O Mary conceived without Sin, Pray for us to have recourse to thee.”

Be inspired by her Fiat to trust in God to see you through wherever turbulent times you may be experiencing these days. And to imitate her patient perseverance in which she has served her Divine Son Jesus both in good times and bad.

And when you find that God is not answering your prayers for healing in some form with the immediacy with which he healed so many people in the gospels, or even if it seems He’s not listening to you at all, don't despair!

But rather ask our Blessed Mother for her assistance in helping you continue to say “yes” to doing God's will, trusting that He will take care of you in His own time in His own way, nonetheless.

God Bless,

Christopher Castagnoli
for www.ourcatholicprayers.com