Annunciation of the Lord
Reflection
Who is God? This is one of the foundational questions of any deistic faith. It can be answered in any number of ways: God is the Creator, the “unmoved-mover,” the supreme being. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal and necessary for all existence. As one can see, efforts to capture the nature of God, to come and “know” God, are often very separate from concrete realities. We can, of course, fall into analogy—for example, God is like a Father—but pondering the nature of God, especially as God is in the first person of the Trinity, tends to lead us into the intellect and the abstract… that is until we encounter the Incarnation of Jesus in the womb of Mary.
Here we move from the abstract to the concrete. No longer is God just the transcendent One, but God is one with us. No longer is God only understood to be omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal, but God is truly human and truly vulnerable as life impregnated by the power of the Holy Spirit in response to Mary’s fiat, “May it be done to me according to your word.” But even more, the incarnation is not simply a one way movement of God assuming our humble existence. In assuming our humanity, God also elevates it. And that is a wondrous inheritance…
Prayer
She was the Mother of the wandering Word,
Little and terrifying in the laboring womb.
And nothing would again be casual and small,
But everything with light invested, overspilled
With terror and divinity, the dawn, the first bird’s call,
The silhouetted pitcher waiting to be filled.
Most Rev. Christopher Coyne, Bishop of Burlington
Scripture
First Reading: Isaiah 7:10-14; 8:10
Psalm 40:7-11
Second Reading: Hebrews 10:4-10
Gospel: Luke 1:26-38
Daily Scripture readings can be found online at the USCCB website
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