The Annuciation. Luke 1:26-38 The Birth of Jesus Foretold 26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be calleda]">[a] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Why was Mary, 'Highly troubled' and why then did the Arcangel Gabriel advise her not to be afraid? I think in my own spiritual life I am far , far more used to counsel and rebukes, to being set straight as it were. But every now and again I get little words of affirmation or encouragement. Paradoxically the words of rebuke or counsel don't worry me, but the least words of praise throw me for a loop and do cause me great concern. So much so indeed that many, many years ago I came to agreement with God to not give me any but to let me go on blindly on the Pilgrim Path, because as Jesus said, John 20:29 Jesus Appears to Thomas …28Thomas replied, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.” 30Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book.… Mary took the absolute bottom place at the table in terms of humility. Now along comes this arcangel who offers to lead her to the very top of the table, ahead of all the powers of heaven, to be the Mother of God, no wonder she was troubled and afraid. A very normal reaction of a woman who was deeply, deeply humble, the most humble of all. For He who was mighty was about to do great things for her.
Humility is an absolute for the Spiritual Life. With it we go forward, without it we sink. It is a bit like a boat. If a boat has a good solid waterproof bottom it can go throw the very worst storms of life and not sink. But even the greatest of ships, like the Titanic , once it has the least hole of pride begins to sink. There is a lovely story along these lines from the Fathers of the Desert Fathers A hermit was sitting praying one day when the devil decided to tempt him to pride by appearing to him as an angel and praising him. But when the devil appeared the Father asked him who had he come to see? The devil at once replied that it was himself he had come to see and the Father said in all due humilty that the false angle must have made a mistake as he was a very great sinner and no angel would want to come near a wretch like him. This caused the devil at once to retreat in confusion. We see this rock bottom humility so well in the Eastern Jesus Prayer which leads the soul into ever deeper humility, 'Lord Jesus Christ , Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner'.
It is subtitled but this film I found to be very moving in this same respect, we truly are nothing but filth even with our most Holy actions they are wretched in comparison to that of the Lord. He is our strength. I love the scenes of him on the island.
Yes!! I love the story about St Francis who when savagely criticized by a church official said meekly: " thank you for telling me the truth about myself." Or St Jean Vianney when a petition was being circulated by fellow priests to the Bishop saying that Father Vianney was unfit to be a priest, the saint signed it. If only I could muster the courage to pray the Litany of Humility. Sigh.
Thanks for reminding me about this Don, I am going to try and watch it at the weekend. I came across it before but never got round to it.
Humility is an odd kind of grace I think in one way. That is I suspect the only way we can learn it really is through pain and suffering. When i look back on my life I am starting to realise how very,very arrogant and proud I was (for very little reason) when I was young. My life in way could be described as an ongoing nose dive from this. In other words God was actively taking me down more than a peg or two. Why is it so painful? Well in the first place because finding out the truth about yourself hurts. One thing I recall , before my conversion was how very dislikeable I was. Nowadays people mostly seem to like me. I don;t know about other people but I had really truly had to touch bottom before coming out of it. With many other people I understand the path is different. Our Lady was born humble. She didn't need teaching a lesson. But since we are all sinners we all have pride and we all need humbled. One funny thing I have noticed is that the very things I criticise others most for is the very thing I am most guilty of myself ; which often makes me laugh. The saints of course are the great teachers. One thing I notice about the saints is that God often puts a great stone in their shoe. In other words some particular person or group of persons who walk through life with them putting the boot in and cutting them down to size. St Fr Charles of Mount Argos a Passionist priest who worked in Dublin Ireland is a good example of this. Apparently these was a priest in his community who publically and very loudly used to give off to the poor saint , putting him in his place. The other brothers got so used to this they though this guy had been given the task by the superiors of speaking out. Not so, the guy was just a crank. So bad did the bad mouthing become that the saint used to say, 'poor old Charlie', after the daily rants. But he never answered back. Not a word. Now THAT'S humility. One great thing about the saints is that they show us how very,very far we have to go. If the ranter had started on me once or twice I would probably have floored him and that would have been the end of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_of_Mount_Argus
I had forgotten the power of the Mysteries of the Rosary. I spent a day and a night meditating on the Annunciation and every time I went through one door of understanding another door came in front of me to go through. Its true that if we died and went to heaven we could spend our Entire Eternity meditating on just one Mystery and have an Eternity of Eternities to meditate on it still to do. The angels up there must just have a ball thinking about these things. The Annunciation of course includes the Mystery of the Incarnation, which is just HUGE. Why so much to think on? Well in these events God exhausted Himself , so to speak. When God put so much effort ( I speak in human terms) in, there's so much to see. An explosion of Divine Energy , so to speak. Even each of us souls is a huge mystery. I often look at people in all their depth and wonder and think to myself, 'No wonder God loves people, no wonder He died for them'. Have you ever looked at just the physical appearance of people and though how beautiful they are? No matter what age or what their appearance people are very,very beautiful. We just are so used to looking at them we no longer see this. We talk of God's love for us, but did you ever wonder why God loves us? That we might be worth loving because we are so well made? God exhausted Himself making us, He pulled out all the stops. If He loves us it is because we are worthy of His love. This beauty, this mystery only crashes when we go to hell. So when we meditate on a Mystery of the Rosary we are ourselves mysteries, beautiful mysteries meditating on other Great beautiful mysteries. As we grow into the Mystery of Christ so our ability to see into these mysteries deepens and changes. Think too if a thousand people were to meditate on a mystery each person could come out with a different Wisdom. Not only this but some might come out with a Wisdom never heard before. It is a bit like fishing in an endless sea.
