Living with and Proclaiming the Word Made Flesh, Solemnity of the Annunciation, March 25, 2025

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (Old Cathedral), St. Louis, Missouri
TPMS Midwest Regional Meeting
Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
March 25, 2025
Is 7:10-14.8:10, Ps 40, Heb 10:4-10, Lk 1:26-38

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

It is such a joy for all of us, from the Pontifical Mission Societies nationally and throughout the Midwest, to be here in this historic Basilica, the first Cathedral west of the Mississippi, the launching pad and sacred respite for some of the greatest missionaries in the Catholic history of our country, like the great Father Pierre de Smet among the native Americans. We are so grateful to Saint Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski, a very active member of TPMS’ board, for welcoming us here to this Basilica and celebrating Mass for us. We thank Bishop Mark Rivituso for his solicitude and supervision of the missionary work of the Archdiocese of St. Louis for his presence today. We likewise thank Father Nick Smith, rector of this Basilica, for his tour before Mass and for rolling out the red carpet for us on this great feast. As all three of them all know, this present fourth Church on this property was built with the help of funds solicited by Bishop Joseph Rosati, a priest of the Congregation of the Mission, from the Society of the Propagation of the Faith in France, founded only 12 years earlier. The construction was likewise helped by the former prefect of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, Cardinal Bartolomeo Cappellari, who became Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846). So this Church was is deeply embedded in the history of the Society of the Propagation of the faith.

As we entered this beautiful Basilica today, we were greeted on the façade by three marble inscriptions from the Book of Revelation, one in Latin, another in French and a third in Latin. “Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and He will dwell with them” (Rev 21:3). That inscription orients our celebration today of the most important event in the history of the universe, when at the Incarnation, God entered his creation, taking on our humanity. As Saint John would write in the Prologue to his Gospel, literally, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled himself among us.”  The definitive place of God with the human race is Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Jesus’ humanity was the sacrament of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He tabernacled himself in our human nature within the womb of the Blessed Virgin. He tabernacles himself among us still in this Church under the even humbler appearances of bread and wine. He desires to tabernacle himself among each of us in Holy Communion, as he dwells not just with us but within us. These are all mind-blowing mysteries to which human words will never do justice.

The Solemnity of the Annunciation contains great lessons for us as baptized missionary disciples in communion entrusted by the Church with fostering the zealous continuation of Jesus’ mission bringing him, his words, and his invitation to a life of communion with him and with us to the ends of the earth. These are the three great lessons contained in the prayer of the Angelus, which the Church prays each day to actualize the mystery of the Incarnation we solemnly celebrate today. We saw earlier in the Basilica’s museum the bell cast in 1772 that for centuries, among other purposes, would ring three times a day, at 6 am, noon and 6 pm — in three groups of three before a steady peal — calling us not just to pray but to remember the incarnation of the Lord and what our response to it must be. Each of the three versicles of the Angelus contains a great lesson for us in our Christian faith, life and life-long mission.

Angelus Domini annuntiavit Mariae. “The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.” St. Luke begins today’s Gospel saying, “The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, ‘Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.’” The Angel Gabriel was a great missionary from the Lord himself. Angelus, in Latin, means “messenger.” He brought the good news. The words he delivered were not just a greeting by and world changing message of joy, “Kaire, kecharitomene, ho Kurios meta sou.” in Greek: “Rejoice, you who have been filled with grace. The Lord is with you.” While there will obviously only ever be one immaculately conceived Blessed Virgin filled with grace from the first moment of her one-celled existence in St. Anne’s womb, the Church in every age is called to bring a similar sweet proclamation to the world, “Rejoice!,” and to tell the world why: first because every creature is called to be “filled with grace” through baptism and the sacramental and moral life; and second, because the Lord is truly with them. God has entered the world. He is not a figure from the distant past but still very much with us, desiring to walk at our side, desiring to dwell within. Every missionary is a spiritual descendant of the Arch-missionary Gabriel sent out to remind specific persons in specific places that they are not anonymous random biological happenings but willed by God, called by God, and commissioned by God, to be filled with him him and filled with his life. What a joy it is to be able to be like Gabriel to the people of our age.

Ecce Ancilla Domini. Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to be according to your word.” The second versicle of the Angelus involves Mary’s response to God’s proclamation through Gabriel, something that is meant to guide every human response. As we see in today’s Gospel, Mary was at first overwhelmed by the Archangel’s words, wondering what they might mean. Gabriel explained to her that she had found great favor with God and that she would become not only the mother of the long-awaited Messiah, the son of David, but also, the mother of the eternal Son of the Most High God whose kingdom would know no end. That would have confused her even more. The question she asked about how that would take place, “How can this be since I have no relations with a man?,” is a sign not of naïve stupidity about the birds and bees but an indication of a promise of consecrated virginity, since if she were intending ever to have relations with St. Joseph, she would never have needed to ask how she’d become a mom. After the Archangel explained that it would happen through a miracle of the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing her, she believed, and said that she was placing herself at the Lord’s service to have her entire existence develop according to the Lord’s word and will.

This is the type of faith that each Christian is meant to show to our own having been chosen by God to be his follower and missionary. What happened in us at our Baptism was truly miraculous. God came to fill us, to help us to enter into Jesus’ death and resurrection, to live a truly new life, as a member of his Mystical Body, with a mission to continue his saving work. Each of us, having been filled with this grace, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and confirmation and what St. Paul calls life according to the Spirit, is called humbly to say that we are the servants of the Lord and our great desire is not to do our will but his, to let our life flourish not according to our own wits but his divine word and will. And that’s likewise the response we seek when we announce God’s great plans and hopes for others. Not everyone, we know, will respond as promptly and as wholeheartedly as our Lady, but it’s amazing that some, even many, will. They will embrace their summons to a new life with Christ with incredible joy, profound conversion, and great zeal to have everyone else come to know, love and serve Christ with them. And the more we get outside of ourselves to share the treasure of our faith with others, the more we will see and share the joy of seeing lives dramatically changed by Christ for the better.

Et verbum caro factum est. Et habitavit in nobis. “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled himself among us.” The final versicle of the Angelus points to the principal mystery we mark today, the incarnation of the Lord. The Lord willed to assume our human nature, wondrously to unite it to his divine Person, to take it somehow into the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. In having created us in his image and likeness, God foresaw from all eternity, as St. Paul ponders in his Letter to the Ephesians, that he himself would manifest the fullness of that humanity, that image and likeness, through making us partakers of his divinity. The eternal Logos, the Word through whom all things were made, became one of us, he had a human face, human hands, human muscles and bones, a human heart beating with human blood, everything that it means to be human, except the privations of human nature that flow personal sin. He did this to dwell among us, literally to tabernacle himself within us. This points to the reality of Holy Communion. The summit of salvation history is not the incarnation we celebrate today. It’s not even his passion, death, resurrection and ascension. It’s actually the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, which he prepared since the Tree of Life at the beginning of the creation, by which what happened in Mary can by analogy be perpetuated in us. He wants to dwell within us, to make us his habitat us among the human race, to abide in us and have us abide in him.

This is key for us to grasp in our Mission work. It’s key for the whole Church to understand. We are sent out not just to proclaim the Gospel, understood as the saving words of God. We’re sent out to proclaim the Word made Flesh, that God-with-us is still with us, that the same God whom the angels adored in Mary’s womb, whom she brought to Elizabeth and John the Baptist, to whom the shepherds and the wise men journeyed to pay homage, is with us in our churches. He just looks different. And he wants under those humble sacramental appearances to dwell within each of us in a holy Communion, an embrace, that is meant to last forever. And so the Church’s mission work is ultimately to bring Christ to people, not just his saving message and teachings. It’s to build Churches, not understood as buildings but as missionary-disciples-in-communion, since the ultimate impact of our receiving Holy Communion, our cooperation with the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing of the altar, of the Archbishop and priests, and of us, is to make us, as we pray in Eucharistic Prayer III, “one body, one spirit in Christ.” As our Holy Father powerfully told us in his exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, the kerygma, the essential proclamation of our faith, is not a recapitulation of Jesus’ past deeds. It’s that the incarnation and paschal mystery are not past events at all, but a living, present realities we access by the Holy Spirit’s power in the Church. To use Pope Francis’ own words, our basic missionary message involves reminding people of “the personal love of God who became man, who gave himself up for us, who is living and who offers us his salvation and his friendship” (EG 128). Or to put the kerygma even more powerfully in the grammatical second person rather than the third, “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you” (EG 164). How privileged we are to share that fact with the world, especially with a people walking in darkness who long, sometimes without knowing it, to see the Light of the World.

In a minute, on this great solemnity in this most sacred place where we “behold the tabernacle of God with men,” we will pray together our Profession of Faith, rejoicing it the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. When we pray the awesome words that point to today’s feast, “For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man,” we will kneel together, as we do on Christmas, in prayerful, grateful, recognition of human history’s most pivotal moment. But that kneeling is linked to the way we will drop to our knees before the consecration at the altar, as Jesus himself takes on the role of Gabriel and announces to us the greatest and most joyful words human ears will ever hear, “This is my Body … given for you,” “This is the chalice of my Blood, … poured out for you,” “Take and eat,” “Take and drink.” This is the means by which he extends what happened in Nazareth within the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Louis and what he wants to happen within our bodies and souls, making us his dwelling place among the human race. As we prepare, in imitation of our Lady, helped by the Holy Spirit, to echo her fiat by our amen, we beg through her intercession, that our whole life may develop in accordance with the Word-made-flesh, the blessed Fruit of her womb, and like her may become living commentaries of the words of consecration as we give our body, our blood, our time and our whole life in memory of Jesus, as the Gabriels our age needs.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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