Homily Solemnity of the Annunciation

Homily Solemnity of the Annunciation

Nazareth, April 8, 2024

Is 7:10-14; 8:10; Heb 10:4-10; Lk 1:26-38

Beloved brothers and sisters,

may the Lord give you peace!

This year we celebrate the solemnity of the Annunciation a bit late because of the coincidence with Easter. But this is also a providential opportunity to understand what the Lord wants to tell us. In fact, we usually celebrate this solemnity during Lent, while this year it is right on the liturgical day of Easter. We are in the octave. For eight days, that is, we celebrate the same day: Easter, the resurrection of Christ. The mystery of the Incarnation of God, which we celebrate today, has as its final conclusion in the resurrection of Christ. Today, then, we celebrate on the same day the two main events of salvation history, which are linked to each other: the Incarnation and the Resurrection!

Today's Gospel passage takes us back to the book of Genesis. We are all familiar with the creation account. God created man for his happiness and asked him to remain faithful. But man preferred to listen to other voices, the voice of the divisive Devil, and reject God's proposal. And so, when God in the garden seeks him, man is no longer found. God's first question throughout the Bible is precisely, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). Before sin, there was familiarity between God and man. In the garden He had created for man, God came down to walk (Gen 3:8). This is an ancient way to describe this familiarity. But sin interrupted this relationship. God no longer finds man; in fact, man hides because he is afraid (“I heard your voice in the garden: I was afraid, for I am naked, and I hid myself” Gen 3:10). There is no more trust.

The history of salvation consists of nothing more than continually picking up the threads of this relation with the Lord, the struggle to rebuild trust, the faithfulness to the covenant, to recreate that familiarity.

Today's Gospel is a response to this desire for familiarity. Mary does not hide like Adam and Eve in the garden, and she enters into dialogue with God. When God seeks her, her response is not fear. There is certainly confusion in her, there is trepidation, because she feels the weight of this disproportion, between her and God. But this does not prevent her from listening. God's request involves so many problems from the human point of view: who could have understood such a mystery? Joseph would have rejected her, there would have been a scandal...there were many valid social and family reasons for declining this request.

Mary, on the other hand, is convinced by God's truth, by what God tells her, and that is simply not to be afraid: “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God” (Lk. 1:30). Just as fear is the fruit of sin, trust is the fruit of grace. This is the new thing, the new creation that God accomplishes in Mary, a woman again able to trust God.

So Mary says “yes” to being what man was created for in the beginning, a place of the Word, a land that welcomes the Word of God.

Today's solemnity tells us that this shift from fear to trust, from loneliness to relationship, is possible by grace. It is not possible because of any effort on the part of man, who alone succeeds in re-establishing a right relationship with God, but because God Himself chooses a creature and makes her capable again of a full relationship with Him, a relationship free from the consequences of sin. A creature capable again, simply, of trust.

Jesus with Easter will complete the work begun with the “yes” of Mary. By his obedience to the Father, he restores the new creation once and for all and gives the world new life. Today’s Gospel, then, speaks to us of a “yes” to faith and trust even in what seems humanly impossible, of a “yes” to the listening in spite of the human trepidation, of a “yes” to life even when it will create problems of all kinds, without fear.

These are important life directions for all of us and especially in this time where trust is the major victim of this war. Mary teaches us to say “yes” with a defeated confidence to what is to come, because she trusts God. It will not be easy. He will tell almost immediately that “a sword will pierce your soul” (Luke 2:35). But he will remain faithful to his initial “yes”.

There is a kingdom, which began with that very “yes” and which reaches its fulfillment with Christ's Passover, which we celebrate today, where the Lord of life triumphs, where peace is donated by wounded and at the same time not defeated hands and hearts, where death lies emptied, like the cloths of the tomb.

This is not alienation or abstract escape from reality. This is steadfast trust in the risen Christ who, if he sends us as lambs among wolves, also assures us that victory over death is decided.

Easter faith, however, also has its weapons. As Paul reminded us in writing to the Colossians, “If you have risen with Christ ... turn your thoughts to things above, not to things on earth” (3:1-2). It is not a matter of fostering contempt for earthly realities, forgetting this world of suffering, injustice, and sin, in order to live in advance in a heavenly paradise. Instead, it is about fighting a spiritual war, avoiding “the things of earth”. It is about fighting in us and around us, against a vision of life and relationships that prefers violence and oppression. It is about becoming, today more than ever, new men and women who renounce the old and usual logics and clothe themselves with Christ. It is thus a matter of making Christ's sentiments our own : “sentiments of tenderness, of goodness, of humility, of meekness, of magnanimity, bearing with one another and forgiving one another (...).  But above all these things clothe yourselves with charity, which perfectly unites them” (Col 3:12-14).

And this is the way not only to transform ourselves, but to transform the world, to give the earthly city a new face that fosters the development of man and society according to the logic of solidarity, goodness, with deep respect for the dignity proper to each person.

This is what we need, today more than ever, in this Holy Land of ours. Trusting God, means being able to return to trusting the other, to have the courage of self-giving, to oppose gestures of peace and reconciliation to those who want to impose logics of violence and rejection.

Dear Brothers and sisters, let us also fight with Christ the good fight of faith. The Holy Virgin today invites all of us to oppose the powers of death with our humble but firm witness of love, of donating, of forgiveness and reconciliation, saying “yes” to the will of God. Baptism has made us citizens of heaven no less than our birth has made us citizens of this beloved and difficult Holy Land. Let us illuminate the darkness of the world with the light of Easter, keeping our lamp lit as we all wait to participate in Christ's Easter victory over evil and death.

May the Blessed Virgin intercede for all of us and give all our families the joy, love and enthusiasm to repeat today once again, with confidence, "yes" to the Lord, "yes" to those we love, yes to our neighbor.

Happy celebration to all!