This day reminds me how many of us Protestants bring out Mary in Advent and Christmas, and we consider her sorrows at Good Friday, but we don’t think so much about her the rest of the Christian year.
Reminded of this holiday by the Facebook post of a former student, now a rasophore nun at a Byzantine Catholic monastery, I turned to the prayer book she once recommended to me(1). I enjoy the rich use of scriptural images as well as the meditations upon the mystery of the Trinity. These are from the service “Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary,” pages 435-467.
“Gabriel, leader of the powers above, flew down and greeted the Virgin, saying: ‘Hail, thou pure chariot of the divinity: God has loved thee from eternity, and He has chosen thee to be his dwelling...
“Revealing to thee the pre-eternal counsel, Gabriel came and stood before thee, O Maid; and greeting thee, he said, ‘Hail, thou earth that has not been sown; hail, thou burning bush that remains unconsumed; hail, thou unsearchable depth; hail, thou bridge that leads to heaven, and ladder, raised on high that Jacob saw; hail, thou divine jar of manna; hail, thou deliverance from the curse; hail, thou restoration of Adam, the Lord is with thee...
“How shall He whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth be held in the womb of a woman? He upon whom the six-winged seraphim and the many-eyed cherubim cannot gaze has been pleased at a single word to be made flesh of this His creature. It is the Word of God who dwells within her....
“Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; for the Son who is coeternal with the Father, sharing His throne and like Him without beginning, in His compassion and merciful love for mankind has submitted Himself to emptying, according to the good pleasure and counsel of the Father; and he has gone to dwell in a virgin’s womb that was sanctified beforehand by the Spirit. O marvel! God is come among men; He who cannot be contained is contained in a womb; the Timeless enters time; and, strange wonder! His conception is without seed, His emptying is past telling: so great is this mystery! For God empties Himself, takes flesh, and is fashioned as a creature, when the angel tells the pure Virgin of her conception: ‘Hail, thou who are full of grace: the Lord who has great mercy is with thee.’ …”
1. The Festal Menaion, translated by Mother Mary of the Orthodox Monastery of the Veil of the Mother of God, Bussy-en-Othe, France, and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware of the University of Oxford. Published in South Canaan, PA by St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1998.
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