Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. John Cantius Parish, Chicago, Illinois
Women’s Lenten Retreat: “The Word Made Flesh:
The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”
Solemnity of the Annunciation, Extraordinary Form
March 25, 2023
Is 7:10-14, Ps 45: 3.5.11.12, Lk 1:26-38
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- Today as we celebrate this Women’s Lenten Retreat, we mark the most important event in human history, the time when, out of love for us and to save us, the Son of God himself became one of us in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Everything Jesus would later do flows from this event, which should never cease to fill us with wonder. And this incarnation is not just a one-time event in the distant past, but a continual reality. God-with-us is still with us, most especially in the enduring incarnation of the Holy Eucharist, something we will ponder together today and seek to nourish through the three-year-plus Eucharistic Revival being led by the U.S. Bishops. The Church has us focus on the significance of the Annunciation and Incarnation each day in the prayer of the Angelus, by which the Church helps us in the three antiphons and the closing prayer to ponder the good news of great joy announced by the Archangel, the gift of God-with-us, and Mary’s response. I’d like to ponder together this prayer and look at it in a Eucharistic key.
- Let’s begin with the third antiphon, taken from St. John’s prologue. “The Word became flesh … and dwelled among us.” The Eternal Word of God, who is (not was) with the Father and the Holy Spirit from the beginning, on this day took on our nature dwelling among us and within us. In today’s first reading, Isaiah on behalf of God, gave Ahaz the same privilege as God had given Ahaz’s great, great, great, great, great grandfather Solomon, to request a sign as high as the sky or as deep as the nether world, but neither Ahaz nor anyone else would have ever fathomed asking God for what God in fact ended up doing: that he would himself become a human being in the immaculate womb of a virgin full of grace in order to rescue us and lead us on the path to salvation. Jesus took on our human nature — not just human flesh but a human soul (or as St. Paul would have it, a human soul and spirit) as well — in order to redeem it all and eventually give it for us. That’s what the Letter to the Hebrews helps us to ponder. “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me,” it puts into the mouth of Jesus upon entering the world. Jesus replied, with words and body language, “Behold, I come to do your will.” Jesus had come to obey and to show us how to obey the loving, saving will of God the Father. To enter into the mystery of the Incarnation, we need to enter morally through faithful adherence to God.
- That brings us to the second antiphon of the Angelus. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. … Let it be done to me according to your word.” The great Solemnity of the Incarnation we mark today wasn’t exclusively God’s work. By God’s own design, it also was totally dependent on human cooperation. And we see and rejoice in that total, grace-filled cooperation by the Immaculate Virgin Mary, who because she had never known sin was able to get a totally free and full response to God’s will to redeem the human race. She was willing to allow her entire life to develop according to God’s plan. In depictions of this scene, Mary is most often portrayed kneeling, meditating on the Word of God. She was already seeking to conform her life entirely to the Word of God. She was already a servant of God through his word. Her adhesion to God through his word was so strong that that Word would literally take on her own flesh, not only in her womb but in her entire life. In response to the Archangel Gabriel’s calling her kecharitomene, “You who have been filled with grace,” she humbly referred to herself as, “The handmaid of the Lord.” To be full of grace — full of God — means, like the Son whom she conceived, to be fully at God’s service. Her body, soul and spirit were likewise fully and freely at God’s disposal. Her response to God’s word, God’s will, God’s plans are obviously given to us each day by the Church as a model for our own.
- We come now to the first antiphon, “The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary … and she conceived by the Holy Spirit,” which points to the absolute wonder we should have at this day. We mark an incredible miracle and truth of faith. Jesus wasn’t conceived in the order of natural human generation but by a miraculous intervention of God’s grace. This is what’s contained in Mary’s question in the Gospel for today’s Mass. After the Archangel tells her that she will conceive and bear a son, she asks, “How can this be for I do [or better in Hebrew, will] not know man?” Such a question would make no sense if Mary had been planning to consummate her marriage with St. Joseph, since then she would well have known how she would conceive in her womb and bear a son. Her question points to the fact that she had already consecrated herself as a virgin to God and that if she was to conceive a son, either she would need to break that commitment or God would have to intervene. God did intervene. The Holy Spirit overshadowed her and she conceived with his help Jesus, who on the one hand came from her flesh, but on the other came also by a new creation on the part of God (from which Jesus got his other 23 chromosomes, including his Y). We rejoice in that overshadowing today and ask the Lord to increase our wonder at his miraculous intervention.
- That brings us finally to the way that this Mystery endures in the stupendous gift of the Holy Eucharist by which God-with-us remains with us until the end of time. The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary in Nazareth and throughout her life comes now to overshadow this altar and all of us in a double epiclesis. He comes to work just as great a miracle as Jesus’ virginal conception, totally changing bread and wine into Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Then he wants to overshadow all of us and through our communion with the Word-made-flesh transform us into one body, one spirit in Christ. St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, once said that if we were given the opportunity, like King Solomon and King Ahaz, to ask for anything whatsoever we wanted, as high as the heavens or as deep of the netherworld, if even we had been given a thousand such requests, we would have never dreamed to ask God not just to take on our humanity and become God-with-us in the womb of a virgin, not just to live with us, to suffer and die for us, and to rise from the dead, but to go so much further than that and decide to remain with us until the end of time under the appearances of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist, so that we not only could adore him, but in fact eat his flesh and drink his blood and become one with him as he sought to transform us into himself. But what we would have never dreamed to ask, God, St. John Vianney said, has in fact done. He did this all to save and sanctify us, which is the point of the Incarnation in Mary’s womb in Nazareth and of the continuous Incarnation on the altar. We pray at the end of the Angelus, as well as in the Postcommunion Prayer at the end of this Mass, “Pour forth we beseech you, O Lord, your 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.” That’s not a prayer just for the future, but for the present, as we enter into Jesus’ risen life through Holy Communion. What St. Thomas Aquinas calls the res mirabilis (the mindblowing reality) and the fathers of the Church called the admirabile commercium(the wondrous exchange) happens here, as just like a drop of water is mixed with the wine in the chalice, so “may we come to share in the divinity of Him who humbled himself to share our humanity.” The Solemnity of the Annunciation and the reality of the incarnation is meant ultimately to divinize us, to unite us with the Word made flesh so that, like Mary, our entire life may develop in accordance with Christ’s word, we might truly become the Lord’s servants, we may be filled with God’s grace, and we in our own body might be able to say back to the Lord, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me” and “Behold, I come to do your will.”
- Let us ask the Lord as we begin this Lenten Day of Prayer, that through our living this ongoing greatest event in human mystery, we may in turn become Angels for the world, bringing others, like the Archangel Gabriel brought Mary, to enter into this great and ongoing mystery of the depth of divine love! Fiat nobis secundum verbum tuum! Fiat voluntas tua! Amen!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A Reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah
Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz: Ask for a sign from the LORD, your God; let it be deep as the nether world, or high as the sky! But Ahaz answered, “I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!” Then he said: Listen, O house of David! Is it not enough for you to weary men, must you also weary my God? Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.
The Continuation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke
In the sixth month, 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, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
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