"I AM GOD'S SLAVE"

Thursday in Passion Week (The Feast of the Annunciation)

The Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel came to the Blessed Virgin and asked her consent to be the Mother of God, always falls during Lent. That seems most fitting. Mary is the ideal Christian, the perfect keeper of Lent.

Like many Jewish girls of her day, Mary grew up on the lore that one day, some young woman would be the mother of the Messiah. Like so many expectations, it’s safe to say the reality and fantasy weren’t too closely linked. When Gabriel told Mary of the great things God had in store, she replied “How can this be? I’m still a virgin.” When the angel told her what God had already set in motion, Mary embraced his words. The beautiful King James translation records her words: “Behold, the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” The original Greek text is more blunt: “I am God’s slave,” she answered. Did she know what those words entailed?

She was a young girl in a small, overcrowded village. Everybody knows everybody else, and in a village there’s no such thing as a secret. Did she think, as she contemplated the angel’s words, what might happen? The surreptitiously pointed fingers, the cloaked whispers and false smiles she’d endure through the coming months would become her daily realities as the unearthly visitation of the angel faded into the background. Her fiancée, a decent man, didn’t insist on his rights—by the Law she was subject to stoning. “He was minded to put her away privately,” the Evangelist tells us.

Still, she clung to God’s promise, in spite of all the difficulties she hadn’t foreseen. What better describes us when we try to be faithful? When we do the thing which is right, when many around us think the worst, our temptation is to give in and try to make people understand. We want sympathy in our times of testing. Our Lord, standing on trial before the Sanhedrin, was exhorted: “Prove to us You are Who You say! Do something spectacular! Don’t just stand there!” But His Heart was fixed on the ancient prophecy of Isaiah about His hour: “He was brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before His shearers…He opened not his mouth.” Mary’s young heart must have been torn and confused by the false assurances of friendship and stark accusing glares. She must have repeated her words, “Behold, I am God’s slave,” over and over again—it was her Lenten prayer.

She proved faithful for nine months. Joseph, himself visited by angels, overcame his doubts and married her. What a life he had as a result of this girl! Oriental potentates bearing exotic gifts came to call, the young family was chased to Egypt by spies and soldiers in hot pursuit, he lived in lands he’d only heard of in stories, then returned home to try and provide some hint of a normal life for his wife and Son.

For Mary, there was the Jewish mother’s pride in her Son as He grew in Grace and took His place in the community. As He carried on His ministry, she watched and listened. No doubt her heart shuddered at His words when He foretold His death, and the many depictions of the Pieta all unite in showing us her grief. She held the dead body of her Son, the Son of God, and somewhere, in her spotless heart, those words echoed: “Behold, I am God’s slave.”

Sin is bad, not because we break some arbitrary rules God made up, thinking “Now I can’t let them have too much fun. Let’s see…ten’s a good number of rules to start with…” Sin is bad because God made us a certain way. Some things are good for us, let’s say, a good laugh and friendship, and some things, like ingesting arsenic or breathing in carbon monoxide, aren’t. Some things are so bad they’ll kill us outright. We are made, as St Thomas Aquinas says, to be “friends of God” (he means that in the old classical sense of “intimates,” not just “nodding acquaintances”). He has made us for communion with Himself, and a fellowship of charity with one another. Sin rips and shreds at His intention for us. It turns us from Him and from unpretended charity with each other. It makes us false. And part of us loves it. We’re so well-trained we drink from the arsenic bottle and think “Now that’s a liqueur!”

Annunciation comes in Lent. It makes it hard for liturgical specialists, whose ultimate conundrum used to be “What happens when the Annunciation falls on Good Friday?” Figuring out those ritual rules requires one of those old-fashioned slide rules. But what could be better for us? “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord,” may spring naturally to one’s lips in the ecstasy of an angelic visitation. “Behold, I am God’s slave,” those are words we need to hold in our hearts every day, as we follow the Lord to Calvary.