Day 37, Thursday, 25 March, The Annunciation You have prepared a body for me

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 37, Thursday, 25 March, The Annunciation

You have prepared a body for me

This annunciation, this proclamation, this ‘breaking news’, is astonishing. The quote from Isaiah 7:10-14 doesn’t really say much. ‘The maiden is with child and will soon bear a son’. Nothing out of the ordinary there, you would say, except the enigmatic name – Emmanuel, ‘God is with us’ – gives a hint.

The passage from Hebrews 10:4-10 deepens the mystery. The whole letter is about God’s Son: ‘in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son … he is the radiant light of God’s glory.’ Now we are told this Son has a body, a human body, that defining structure of flesh and bone, blood and life, that we call a human person. God has been conceived as a person in the womb of a woman. Did the hearers of the letter understand?

Finally, the Church preserves the words of Luke (1:26-38) as the definitive clear expression of the breaking news: the child that Mary will bear will ‘rule over the house of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end … the child will be called Son of God.’

Of all the proclamations that have been made since the world began this is the most wonderful. If God becomes one of us then nothing can ultimately go wrong. He is with us, among us, part of us, one of us. This day, 25 March, just nine months before 25 December.

We are living Lent. But as it moves to a climax, we recall today the beginning of the story. Because he was one of us, he had to live out the implications of being human which includes the battle with sin and death. Because he was God, there was no way sin and death could overcome him. His rising from the dead is the sign of this. Good news for us.