Patrick Comerford
We are in the middle of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), and this week began with the Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III). Today is the Feast of the Annunciation or, more formally, the Annunciation of Our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and I hope to attend the Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, later this evening.
Today is also celebrated in Greece as Greek Independence Day or the Greek National Day, commemorating the start of the Greek War of Independence on 25 March 1821, when Bishop Germanos of Patras raised the Greek flag of revolution over the Monastery of Agia Lavra in the Peloponnese. This is a national holiday and a day of great pride and celebration for Greeks around the world.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 1: 26-38 (NRSVA):
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ 34 Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ 35 The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.’ 38 Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.
Today’s Reflection:
We are half-way through Lent, half way on our journey to Easter. This year, I am going to celebrate Easter back in Greece. I have celebrated Easter in the past in Rethymnon, Platanias and Tsesmes in Crete, in Thessaloniki and on Mount Athos, and In Nicosia in Cyprus. This year, Holy Week and Easter fall on the same dates in the Western and Orthodox church calendars, and I am looking forward to the Greek Orthodox celebrations of Good Friday and Easter in the Cathedral and in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon in Crete next month.
In the Greek Church, the Feast of the Annunciation is one of the 12 Great Feasts of the Church. It is so important in Orthodox theology that the only time the Divine Liturgy may be celebrated on Good Friday, or ‘Great and Holy Friday,’ is if it falls on 25 March.
In Greece, Orthodox icons and frescoes of the Annunciation are in sharp contrast to the plaster-cast statue images of the Virgin Mary we often see in churches in the west: her demure robes of white and blue hardly portray the strong Mary in the canticle Magnificat, the strong Mary who stands by the Cross when most of the disciples have run away, the strong Mary of the Pieta.
The canticle Magnificat, the Mary who stands by the Cross, the strong Mary of the Pieta, all make the connection between the Annunciation and Good Friday and Easter morning.
The date of the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March, was actually chosen to match the supposed historical date of the Crucifixion. This was to underline the idea that Christ came into the world on the same day that he left it: his life formed a perfect circle. In other words, 25 March was both the first day and the last day of his earthly life, the beginning and the completion of his work on earth.
Saint Augustine of Hippo explains it in this way:
He is believed to have been conceived on 25 March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived … corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried …
Both events were understood to have happened in the spring, when life returns to the earth, and at the vernal equinox, once the days begin to grow longer than the nights and light triumphs over the power of darkness. Fans of JRR Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings cycle know that the final destruction of the Ring takes place on 25 March, to align Tolkien’s own ‘eucatastrophe’ with this most powerful of dates.
The early English historian, the Venerable Bede, says this dating is symbolic but it is not only a symbol: it reveals the deep relationship between Christ’s death and all the created world, including the sun, the moon and everything on earth.
The Annunciation and the Crucifixion are often paired together in mediaeval art. This pairing inspired the development of a distinctive and beautiful image found almost uniquely in English mediaeval art: the lily crucifix – on painted screens, stained glass windows, carvings on stone tombs, misericords, wall-paintings and the painted ceiling of cathedrals, churches and chapels.
The link between the Annunciation and the Crucifixion brings together in one circle the beginning and the end of Mary’s motherhood, its joys and its sorrows, as well as completing the circle of Christ’s life on earth.
When Good Friday fell on 25 March 1608, John Donne marked this conjunction of ‘feast and fast,’ falling ‘some times and seldom,’ with a well-known poem in which he draws on the same parallels found in those mediaeval texts and images.
In Michelangelo’s great sculpture of the Pieta, the weeping Mary bears on her lap the body of the Crucified Christ who has been taken down from the Cross.
In that moment of searing sorrow, she must have wondered: Is this what it was all for, is this the end? Without the benefit of foresight, she could not have known the Easter story.
In her womb, she has carried the Christ Child. Now she cradles the Crucified Christ on her lap. The lap on which he had once played is now the lap on which his limp and lifeless body lies dead.
Was this the journey – from the Annunciation to the Crucifixion?
When I see images of the Pieta, I imagine the Virgin Mary as a mother who knows the fears and lost hopes of so many women: the women who see the death of their own children; the women who hope to be mothers and grandmothers, but never are; the women who see, experience and feel violence and violation at first-hand in their own lives; the women whose own grief is hijacked by others for their own agendas.
But Mary’s yes was to all this: ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word’ (Luke 1: 38).
The Virgin Mary’s ‘Yes’ at the Annunciation is her yes, is our yes, is the ‘Yes’ of humanity and of creation, not only to the Incarnation, but to the Crucifixion on Good Friday, and to the Resurrection on Easter Day, and all the hope for the future that Easter brings.
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 25 March 2025, the Annunciation):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Towards Reconciliation and Renewal’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by the Revd Canon Dr Carlton J Turner, Anglican Tutor in Contextual Theology and Mission Studies and Deputy Director of Research at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 25 March 2025, the Annunciation, International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade) invites us to pray:
Lord, on this day of remembrance, we honour the lives lost and the suffering endured by the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. We pray for healing and justice for those still affected by its legacy. May we remember their stories and strive to create a world free from oppression and discrimination.
The Collect:
We beseech you, O Lord,
pour your grace into our hearts,
that as we have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ
by the message of an angel,
so by his cross and passion
we may be brought to the glory of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God most high,
whose handmaid bore the Word made flesh:
we thank you that in this sacrament of our redemption
you visit us with your Holy Spirit
and overshadow us by your power;
strengthen us to walk with Mary the joyful path of obedience
and so to bring forth the fruits of holiness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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