Nine Months Until Christmas

MARCH 26, 2007

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation of the Lord. It is usually celebrated on March 25 to place it exactly nine months before Christmas Day (as in the nine months of human pregnancy). If you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, this is a happy opportunity to hit the pause-button and give thanks for His Incarnation: the awesome fact that God the Son assumed a human nature in order to bring about our redemption in a real human body. The story goes like this:

In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 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, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God." "I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her. (LUKE 1:26-38)

And it was as Gabriel said. Jesus of Nazareth was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. The Son of God became also the Son of Man – two natures united in one Person.

Besides standing in awe of the majesty and the mystery of God there is something very practical (and challenging) that we can learn from the Incarnation: radical humility. As the Apostle Paul wrote:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. (PHILIPPIANS 2: 5-7)

Today make yourself nothing. Make it your high ambition to be nobody, a mere servant, by allowing the power of the Most High to overshadow you as the Blessed Mother did when she said, "May it be to me as you have said." Strive to be the low man on the totem pole. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant”. He knew what He was talking about. The ultimate Something made Himself nothing to give us everything.

And all God's people pray, “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 His resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.”