The Feast of the Annunciation
Categories: hymns, feast-days, bible, salvation-history
Date: 25 March 2012 09:44:53
I will confess that I sometimes need a 'jolt' -- as it were -- to see the sheer wondrousness of God's acts in history, and the showing of His great Love and Mercy, as, to my detriment, I may "know" of feasts of the Church, or events in Christ's life, and the familiarity breeds, well not contempt I pray!, but perhaps inattentiveness or neglect of how great an action it was in the salvation history of the world.
Today, 9 months before Christ's Nativity (Christmas), is the Great Feast of the Annunciation; a feast that, through the hymns and the sermon Father gave, helped me to see the wonder of our salvation. An angel coming to a virgin; the virgin replying, "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word"; and by that word the Word of God, the Second Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, taking flesh and being born of a virgin for the salvation of the world, is indeed an inexpressible wonder, and a sign of the true mercy and love of God. It is indeed the beginning of our salvation, as the troparion for today states:
Today is the beginning of our salvation, The revelation of the eternal mystery! The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace. Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos: Rejoice, O Full of Grace, The Lord is with You!The Theotokos' "Yes" is also a most amazing thing when one thinks about it. But that "Yes" was not a once-off in her life, but as the Orthodox Church teaches that amazing event reflects that fact that Theotokos, the blessed Virgin Mary, lived her entire life in submission to God, as an example for us to follow: as are all the Saints, but the Theotokos in a particular way. The hymns of the Church also show how the Theotokos and Christ's incarnation fulfil events in the Old Testament. There are too many to number, and I can barely recall a few, but from the hymns and teaching of the Church here are a few Old Testament events that found their fulfilment in the incarnation of the Word of God:
- the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-6): as the bush was not consumed by fire, so too the Theotokos bore the fire of Divinity and was not consumed
- similarly, the children in the Burning Furnace (Daniel 3 including the Song of the Three Holy Children): I cannot say it better than a hymn for Matins of the Feast of the Nativity: Truly the furnace moist with dew was the image and figure of a wonder past nature; for it burned not the youths whom it received, even as the fire of the Godhead burned not the womb of the Virgin in which it dwelt. Wherefore, let us offer praise in song, saying: Let all creation praise the Lord, exalting Him evermore, to the end of the ages. [Ode 8]
- the Ladder in Jacob's dream (Genesis 28:10-17): the Theotokos is a Ladder stretching from earth to Heaven, for through her God descended from heaven to earth becoming incarnate
- Gideon's Fleece moist with dew (Judges 6:36-38): as the dew by a miracle appeared on the fleece, so Christ the dew by a miracle appeared on the living fleece, the Theotokos
- the East Gate remaining sealed, "for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it." (Ezekiel 44:1-2): foreshadowing the ever-virginity of the Theotokos