The Continuation of the Annunciation and Incarnation on Calvary, Good Friday, March 25, 2016

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Villa Guadalupe of the Sisters of Life, Stamford, CT
Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion
Good Friday 2016
March 25, 2016
Is 52:13-53:12, Ps 31, Heb4:14-16.5:7-9, Jn 18:1-19:42

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• It would not be lost on any Sister of Life or any serious Catholic that this year Good Friday falls on March 25, the day on which from the earliest days of Christianity the Church celebrated the Solemnity of the Annunciation and the reality of Jesus’ incarnation. Our first when a liturgical collision happens like this is a little sadness that we can’t celebrate both Good Friday and the Mystery of the Annunciation when we “should.” Let’s admit it: there’s something a little off to celebrating the Annunciation on April 4, as we will do this year.
• But at a much deeper level, it’s extraordinarily fitting that we celebrate Good Friday on March 25, because in the early Church, many of the great fathers and figures of the early Church were convinced not only that the Word of God was conceived on March 25 but also died on March 25. St. Augustine wrote in The City of God, “Now Christ died … on the eighth day before the kalends of April [March 25th]. He rose the third day, as the apostles have proved by the evidence of their own senses” (Chapter 54). Tertullian said that it was under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulate of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the times of the Passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April [i.e. March 25th], on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they slew the lamb at even, just as had been enjoined by Moses” (Against the Jews 8). Hippolytus, the papal rival before his reconciliation with Pope Pontian and martyrdom, wrote, “Our Lord was born on Wednesday, December 25th in the forty second of the reign of Augustus and the 5500th year from Adam. He suffered in the 33rd year on Friday March 25th in the 18th year of Tiberius” (On Daniel Book 4). Many other sources, the earliest martyrologies, the Chronogaphy, Epiphanius of Salamis, Orosius of Bracara, and Dionisius Exiguus, who reworked the calendar to try to center of all time, year 1, on Christ’s birth, all give witness to the common understanding in the days of the early Church that the Word came forth from the Father and the Word entrusted himself back to the Father on the same day, March 25.
• And so today it’s fitting for us to look at Good Friday from the perspective of the Incarnation and Annunciation, because we can learn so much about what’s happening today if we look at it from the perspective of what the Church celebrates every March 25, a day so central to your spirituality as Sisters of Life.
• First, the incarnation.
  • The letter to the Hebrews tells us, “When he came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me’ (Heb 10:5). God the Father had indeed prepared a body for Jesus, a body that would eventually be offered as a Paschal Lamb to take away the sins of the world. What he received from Mary on March 25 he gave back to the Father on March 25 three-plus decades. The Word of God’s humility in assuming the form of a slave in the womb of the Virgin of Nazareth showed even greater humility in allowing himself to be imprisoned to the Cross. But because the quiet of the house in Nazareth and the clamor of the place of the Skull outside Jerusalem, we celebrate the same continuous mystery, that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believed in him might not perish but might have eternal life; that Christ took on our humanity so that we might be made partakers of his divinity; that he took on our body so that we might be able to become members of that body, as a Bride united to Bridegroom on the marriage bed of the Cross the union of love is consummated for the Bride’s and the world’s redemption. That’s what helps to make this Friday above all Good. That’s what makes our bitter beholding Jesus’ of bruises and buffets, his crown of thorns, lacerated back, pierced hands, feet and side so paradoxically sweet. He loved us so much, we were so precious in his eyes, that he was willing to enter our world, even into our suffering and death, so that we could enter his kingdom and his triumph over suffering, sin and even death.

• The second great mystery is the Annunciation.
  • When the Archangel Gabriel had appeared to Mary at the Annunciation to reveal to her her role in God’s plan for the salvation of the world, he told her first to rejoice and then told her not to be afraid. After telling her she was full of grace, the Lord was with her and that she had found favor with God, he described how she would conceive in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit a son who would be saved “God-saves,” who would be great, called Son of the Most High God, and who will reign as the Son of David over the house of Jacob forever. These were truly incredible words, for nothing, as the Angel told her, is impossible for God. Her response was to say that she was a handmaid totally at God’s service, announcing that she would let her whole life develop according to God’s word.
  • But as we have been pondering in the first readings from Isaiah at Mass throughout this week and will later in the first reading in the Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion, God’s word has already prophesied that the Messiah would be a suffering servant, that he would be despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, betrayed by a close friend, falsely accused, taunted by his enemies, sold for 30 pieces of silver, led like a lamb to the slaughter, give his back to those who beat him and his cheeks to those who would pull out his beard, that his tongue would stick parched to the roof of his mouth, his hands and feet pierced, his clothes divided for a game of dice, ultimately wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our sins, so that we might be healed by his stripes.
  • The deeper reality of Mary’s fiat, her beatitude through faith — blessed is she who believed that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled, as her cousin Elizabeth said to her — would become clearer over time. And it happened in her second and third annunciations.

• But what happened in Nazareth was just a foretaste of two other annunciations to the Blessed Virgin Mary in which the purpose behind Jesus’ incarnation would become ever clearer. The “second Annunciation” happened at Jesus’ presentation and it was a prophecy of today.
  • St. John Paul II was the one who explored these mysteries in Redemptoris Mater:

• Simeon words, suggested by the Holy Spirit, JP II says, “confirm the truth of the Annunciation. … Simeon’s words match the meaning of this name, which is Savior: “God is salvation.” Turning to the Lord, he says: “For my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel” (Lk. 2:30-32). At the same time, however, Simeon addresses Mary with the following words: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against, that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed”; and he adds with direct reference to her: “and a sword will pierce through your own soul also” (cf. Lk. 2:34-35). Simeon’s words cast new light on the announcement which Mary had heard from the angel: Jesus is the Savior, he is “a light for revelation” to mankind. Is not this what was manifested in a way on Christmas night, when the shepherds come to the stable (cf. Lk. 2:8-20)? Is not this what was to be manifested even more clearly in the coming of the Magi from the East (cf. Mt. 2:1-12)? But at the same time, at the very beginning of his life, the Son of Mary, and his Mother with him, will experience in themselves the truth of those other words of Simeon: “a sign that is spoken against” (Lk. 2:34). Simeon’s words seem like a second Annunciation to Mary, for they tell her of the actual historical situation in which the Son is to accomplish his mission, namely, in misunderstanding and sorrow. While this announcement on the one hand confirms her faith in the accomplishment of the divine promises of salvation, on the other hand it also reveals to her that she will have to live her obedience of faith in suffering, at the side of the suffering Savior, and that her motherhood will be mysterious and sorrowful.”

• The third Annunciation happened on Calvary and Jesus himself was the One who revealed to Mary the vocation to which she once again said fiat.
  • John Paul II tells us in Redemporis Mater:
  • “This blessing [of Mary’s fiat in faith] reaches its full meaning when Mary stands beneath the Cross of her Son (cf. Jn. 19:25), “faithfully preserv[ing] her union with her Son even to the Cross It is a union through faith- the same faith with which she had received the angel’s revelation at the Annunciation. At that moment she had also heard the words: ‘He will be great…and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end’ (Lk. 1:32-33). And now, standing at the foot of the Cross, Mary is the witness, humanly speaking, of the complete negation of these words. On that wood of the Cross her Son hangs in agony as one condemned. ‘He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows…he was despised, and we esteemed him not’: as one destroyed (cf. Is. 53:3- 5). How great, how heroic then is the obedience of faith shown by Mary in the face of God’s ‘unsearchable judgments!’ How completely she ‘abandons herself to God’ without reserve, offering the full assent of the intellect and the will” to him whose ‘ways are inscrutable’ (cf. Rom. 11:33)! And how powerful too is the action of grace in her soul, how all-pervading is the influence of the Holy Spirit and of his light and power!
  • “Through this faith Mary is perfectly united with Christ in his self- emptying. For ‘Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men’: precisely on Golgotha ‘humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross’ (cf. Phil. 2:5-8). At the foot of the Cross Mary shares through faith in the shocking mystery of this self- emptying. This is perhaps the deepest ‘kenosis’ of faith in human history. Through faith the Mother shares in the death of her Son, in his redeeming death; but in contrast with the faith of the disciples who fled, hers was far more enlightened. On Golgotha, Jesus through the Cross definitively confirmed that he was the ‘sign of contradiction’ foretold by Simeon. At the same time, there were also fulfilled on Golgotha the words which Simeon had addressed to Mary: ‘and a sword will pierce through your own soul also.’
  • “Yes, truly ‘blessed is she who believed!’ These words, spoken by Elizabeth after the Annunciation, here at the foot of the Cross seem to re-echo with supreme eloquence, and the power contained within them becomes something penetrating. From the Cross, that is to say from the very heart of the mystery of Redemption, there radiates and spreads out the prospect of that blessing of faith.”
• What this means for us
  • We witness on Calvary Mary’s own suffering at the birth of the Church.
  • As Sisters of Life, you participate in a special way in that spiritual maternity. One of you told me that when you approach this Mystery of Mary’s third Annunciation on Calvary, you cannot help but focus on the “blood and the water” that came forth from Christ as he was pierced. Present at so many childbirths, you see the blood and water coming forth as part of the birth, uniting conception and birth to the blood and water of Calvary.
  • We turn to Mary constantly as Mother and Queen of Mercy. We ask her in the Hail Mary to pray for us sinners now and always. In the Alma Redemptoris Mater, we beg her to hasten to help her children who have fallen by trying to get up again. We’re consistently asking her, “Miserere!” She beholds always with love and mercy.
  • I finish with the words of the Angelus, pointing us toward the day of the Incarnation, but also, in its fiat and its closing prayer, very much pointing us to the Good Friday, and we make this prayer through the woman of the perpetual fiat, the Mother of great faith who accompanies us always just as she accompanied her Son to the end: “Pour forth, O Lord, thy grace into our hearts that we to whom the incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the Message of an angel, may by his Passion and Cross, be brought to the glory of the Resurrection.”

The readings for tonight’s commemoration were: