"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.

Without exaggeration we could call this one of the greatest statements of faith in all the Bible. We read it so often we forget how great it really is. Without warning she meets Gabriel who announces that she will become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. When she asks how, he says, "Don't worry about it. The Holy Spirit will cover you like a cloud and you'll end up pregnant. That's all there is to it." What do you say to that? ...

The Siboro has deep spiritual significance.

When the Virgin Mary became pregnant with our Lord, so United the divine nature (God the word; the white thread) united with human nature (the red thread) as He (God the word) took from the Virgin Mary through the Holy Spirit's influence. And out of this association formed a natural, Christ's nature where both the divine and human nature coexisted.

The "Siboro" is worn from March 25th (the day of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary) until Easter Day when it is clipped off and burnt.

Editor's Note:

Romanians and Bulgarians have a similar folk custom. It's not connected to the Feast of Annunciation, though. Mărțișor, marț and mărțiguș are all names for the red and white string from which a small decoration is tied, and which is offered by people on the 1st day of March. Giving this talisman to people is an old custom, and it is believed that the one who wears the red and white string will be strong and healthy for the year to come. It is also a symbol of the coming spring. Usually, both women and men wear it pinned to their clothes, close to the heart, until the last day of March, when they tie it to the branches of a fruit-tree.

The Armenians have something similar called "narod," which is used during baptisms and weddings.

by His Eminence Archbishop Mor Clemis Eugene Kaplan
Patriarchal Vicar of the Western USA Archdiocese

The event of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary is related to Luke, 1:26-38. The Evangelist tells us that in the sixth month after the conception of St. John the Baptist by Elizabeth, the Archangel Gabriel was sent from God to the Virgin Mary, at Nazareth, a small town in the mountains of Galilee. Mary was of the house of David, and was espoused to Joseph, of the same royal family. She had, however, not yet entered the household of her spouse but was still in between the temple where she was living and Joseph’s house, working, perhaps, over her dowry. The angel having taken the figure and the form of a man, came into the house and said to her: "Hail, full of grace (to whom is given grace, favored one), the Lord is with you." Mary having heard his greeting did not speak; she was troubled in spirit, since she knew not the angel, nor the reason of his coming, nor the meaning of the salutation.

And the angel continued and said: "Fear not, Mary, for you have found grace with God. Behold you shall conceive in your womb, and shall bring forth a son; and you shall call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David His father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end."

The Virgin understood that these were news of the coming Redeemer. But, why should she be the one elected from amongst women for the splendid dignity of being the mother of the Messiah. Therefore, not doubting the word of God like Zachariah, but filled with fear and astonishment, she said: "How shall this be done, because I know not man?"

To remove Mary's anxiety and to assure her that her virginity would be spared, the Archangel answered saying : "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God." As a token of the truthfulness of his words he made known to her the conception of St. John, the miraculous pregnancy of Elizabeth, her relative, now old and barren: "And behold, your cousin Elizabeth; she also has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: because no word shall be impossible with God."

Mary may not yet have fully understood the meaning of the heavenly message and how the maternity might be reconciled with her virginity, but clinging to the first words of the angel and trusting to the Omnipotence of God she said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word."

The verses Luke 1: 34, 35, containing the message of conception through the Holy Spirit are interpolated, and they are proved by the Judaic origin (Isaiah 7:14, Behold a Virgin shall conceive, etc.). St. Luke may have taken his knowledge of the event from an older account, written in Aramaic or Hebrew, or from the Virgin Mary itself. The words: "Blessed are you among women" (v. 28), are spurious and taken from verse 42, the account of the Visitation. The opinion that Joseph at the time of the Annunciation was an aged widower and Mary between twelve and fifteen years of age, is founded only upon apocryphal documents. The local tradition of Nazareth pretends that the angel met Mary and greeted her at the fountain, and when she fled from him in fear, he followed her into the house and there continued his message. The year and day of the Annunciation cannot be determined as long as new material does not throw more light on the subject. The present date of the feast (25 March) depends upon the date of the older feast of Christmas.

The Annunciation is the beginning of Jesus in His human nature. Through His mother, He is a member of the human race. If the virginity of Mary before, during, and after the conception of her Divine Son was always considered part of the deposit of faith, this was done only on account of historical facts and testimonials. The Incarnation of the Son of God did not in itself necessitate this exception from the laws of nature. Only reasons of expediency are given for it, chiefly, the end of the Incarnation. About to found a new generation of the children of God, The Redeemer does not arrive in the way of earthly generations: the power of the Holy Spirit enters the chaste womb of the Virgin, forming the humanity of Christ. Many holy fathers (Sts. Jerome, Ephrem, Cyril, and Augustine) say that the consent of Mary was essential to the redemption. It was the will of God that the redemption of mankind should depend upon the consent of the Virgin Mary. This does not mean that God in His plans was bound by the will of a creature, and that man would not have been redeemed, if Mary had not consented. It only means that the consent of Mary was foreseen from all eternity, and therefore was received as essential into the plan of God.

By Dr. Ray Pritchard

"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" (Luke 1:26-27).

These two verses set the historical framework for the birth of Jesus. They tell us that this episode is not the figment of some writer's imagination.

In the history of the church Mary has often been portrayed as a kind of misty, other-worldly figure. If you look at some of the great paintings of Mary, they make her look so peaceful and beatific you almost forget she was a real person. That's a shame because Luke makes it clear that she was very real, with very real doubts, very real questions, and very real faith. Nowhere is this seen with more clarity than in verse 38:

"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.

Without exaggeration we could call this one of the greatest statements of faith in all the Bible. We read it so often we forget how great it really is. Without warning she meets Gabriel who announces that she will become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. When she asks how, he says, "Don't worry about it. The Holy Spirit will cover you like a cloud and you'll end up pregnant. That's all there is to it." What do you say to that?

Mary said yes. Yes to God, Yes to the impossible, yes to the plan of God. When the angel said, "Nothing is impossible with God" (v. 37), Mary took a deep breath and replied, "May it be to me as you have said" (v. 38).

And so the great journey began.

Grant us faith, O Lord, to believe all that you have spoken, even that which seems impossible to us. Amen.

From a Homily by St Ambrose, Bishop & Doctor

The Lesson from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. (Luke 1:26-38)

At that time: God sent the angel Gabriel to a city of Galilee called Nazareth, where a Virgin dwelt, betrothed to a man of David's lineage; his name was Joseph, and the Virgin's name was Mary. ...

The mysteries of God are unsearchable, and it is especially declared by a Prophet, that a man can hardly know his counsels. Nevertheless, some things have been revealed to us, and we may gather from some of the words and works of the Lord our Saviour, that there was a special purpose of God, in the fact that she who was chosen to be the Mother of the Lord was espoused to a man. Why did not the power of the Highest overshadow her before she was so espoused? Perhaps it was lest any might blasphemously say that she had conceived in adultery the Holy One.

"And the Angel came in unto her." Let us learn from this Virgin how to bear ourselves, let us learn her modesty, let us learn by her devout utterance, above all let us learn by the holy mystery enacted. It is the part of a maiden to be timid, to avoid the advances of men, and to shrink from men's addresses. Would that our women would learn from the example of modesty here set before us! She upon whom the stare of men had never been fixed was alone in her chamber, and she found herself alone with Angels. There was neither companion nor witness there, that what passed might not be debased in gossip: and the Angel saluted her.

The message of God to the Virgin was a mystery, which it was not lawful for the mouth of men, but only of Angels, to utter. For the first time on earth the words are spoken: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee." The holy maiden hears, and believes. At length she said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word." Here is an example of lowliness, here is a pattern of true devotion. At the very moment that she is told she is chosen to be the mother of the Lord she at once declares herself his handmaid. The knowledge that she was Mother of God caused in the heart of Mary only an act of humility.

by Patty Wudel

We are quite a distance from the scripture readings for Advent and Christmas. In today's scripture reading, Jesus is already a grown man! Filled with the power of the Spirit, he has come through 40 days of temptation in the desert and he has begun to teach in the synagogues. Jesus visits his home synagogue and reads from Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Jesus is, as Becca Stelle put it in her teaching several weeks ago, "going public" as a true revolutionary.

This morning though, I invite you to step back with me to an earlier part of the liturgical calendar, a part that never really caught my attention until this year. But this year, I have been thinking quite a lot about the story of the Annunciation to Zechariah and to Mary by the angel Gabriel. I have been pondering the mystery of Annunciation and Incarnation because of several sweet connections that have come to me at Joseph's House.

One connection is the friendship I have with a woman whose name is AG. AG is a resident at Joseph's House. She and I sometimes pray together in her room after dinner, before she goes to sleep. When we pray, AG asks me to light a candle and pray out loud to Mary for her. There was a time long ago when I, a Protestant raised woman, would not have been able to collect my thoughts and feelings and find the words to pray to Mary – but that was then. Now, because of AG I pray to Mary. And I find myself thinking about Mary at other times.

AG invited me to go with her to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception – "I want to take you to Mary's house", she told me. Inside the shrine are many small chapels, each one dedicated to a different aspect of Mary. From the chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, AG hurried as though hurrying to meet a friend. There, in each chapel, she stopped and caressed the hands and feet of the statue of Mary. She murmured her love to her. She thanked her and blessed her.

AG's prayers to Mary are specific – she prays for healing from her cancer and for an apartment of her own. Thus far AG has not received the answer to her prayers that she is asking for. But AG continues to pray and to receive blessings from Mary. To her, Mary is the blessed mother, Mary is her sister; Mary is her friend. Mary has never hurt her or disappointed her. I am moved, knowing this.

My other connection to the Annunciation is through a particular essay in a book of readings for Advent and Christmas. Joel Zimmerman is a Bruderhoff friend who helps out at Joseph's House on Friday mornings. Joel brought us a copy of 'Watch for the Light'. Some of you may have it. Every day there is a different essay by someone who has reflected deeply on the Advent and Christmas scripture readings. The reading for November 30th is by Kathleen Norris, a poet and a convert to Catholicism. In this essay she reflects on the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel, and reading her essay, I was deeply attracted to that story for the first time.

"Annunciation" means "the announcement". It is part of a language of story, poetry, image and symbol that for centuries our Christian tradition has used to convey the central tenets of our faith. It can be a kind of scary word, isn't it? The Annunciation story is a sort of scary story. It's a story about Mystery. I'm surprised, actually, that I am here this morning wanting to share with you my attraction to this Mystery story. More often I am moved by the social message of the Gospels.

Kathleen Norris tells the story of a woman pastor who addresses an ecumenical assembly. "We all know there was no virgin birth", the pastor said. "Mary was an unwed, pregnant teenager and God told her it was okay. That's the message we need to give girls today, that God loves them, and to forget all this nonsense about a virgin birth".

In contrast to the pastor there was a Benedictine, an Assiniboine Indian, who preached on the Annunciation to a First Nations congregation. "The first thing Gabriel does when he encounters Mary", the Assiniboine priest said, "is to give her a new name: 'Most favored one'. It's a naming ceremony", he emphasized, making a connection that excited and delighted his listeners.

"When I brood on the story of the Annunciation", Norris writes, "I like to think about what it means to be 'overshadowed' by the Holy Spirit. I wonder if a kind of overshadowing isn't what every young woman pregnant for the first time might feel, caught up in something so much larger than herself."

Wright's poem seems to do what the pastor talked about doing - it expresses God's love for a girl who finds herself - we used to say, "in trouble", but without the shallow assurance that "it's okay".

Told all her life that she is "nothing", the girl discovers in herself another, deeper reality: A Mystery; something holy, with a potential for salvation. What would such a radically new sense of oneself entail? Could it be a form of virgin birth? Perhaps Mary's "yes" to her new identity, to the immense and wondrous possibilities of her new and holy name, can provide a means of conveying to girls, to young men - to fully grown women and fully grown men -

that there is something in them that no one can touch: that belongs only to them, and to God.

In the presence of Mystery, of a radically new sense of self, the remarks of the pastor at the conference reveal a narrow and impoverished concept of what virginity and virgin birth is. It's in the monastic world that one finds a broader and more relevant grasp of what it could mean to be virgin. Thomas Merton describes the true identity that he sought in contemplative prayer as

a "point vierge" at the center of his being, "a point untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth…which belongs entirely to God, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point…of absolute poverty," he wrote, "is the pure glory of God in us."

It matters for us to hear the message that God loves us, and the mystery of the Annunciation reveals an aspect of that love. It also suggests that our response to this love is critical. A few verses before the Angel appears to Mary in the first chapter of Luke, another annunciation occurs. The Angel announces to an old man, Zechariah, that his equally aged wife is to bear a son who will "make ready a people prepared for the Lord." The couple are to name him John. He is known to us as John the Baptist.

Zechariah replies to the Angel, "How will I know that this is so?"

Such a completely understandable response! Maybe he was afraid to refresh his dream of having a son in case he would be disappointed - devastated - yet again. Maybe he knew and didn't trust himself - after all, the Angel did not say that Elizabeth's pregnancy would happen by immaculate conception. How could he not ask of the Angel, "How can I be sure of this? How will I know that this is so?" given that he was old and his wife was past menopause?

Yet, Zechariah's was a very different response from the one Mary makes. Mary replies to the Angel, "How can this be?" How can this be?

For Kathleen Norris, Zechariah's response seeks knowledge and information from God. In her response to the Angel, Mary is receptive to wisdom; she is pondering a state of being. God's response to Zechariah is to make him speechless during the entire term of his wife's pregnancy. He doesn't speak again until after the child is born, and he has written on a tablet "His name is John". Perhaps Zechariah's punishment was actually a form of grace in that for nine months he could quietly think about his initial response when confronted with Mystery. When he does speak again, it is to praise God. He's had nine months to think it over!

Mary's "How can this be?" is a simpler response than Zechariah's and also more profound. She does not lose her voice, but finds it. Like any of the prophets, she asserts herself before God saying, "Here am I." There is no arrogance, however, but only holy fear and wonder. Mary proceeds – as we must do in life – making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead. Like the writer Kathleen Norris, I am compelled by the story of the Annunciation because of the questions about myself that it raises:

• When the Mystery of the love of God breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it?
• Do I ask of it what it cannot answer?
• Or… am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, an "yes" that will change me forever?

There is a poem by Denise Levertov that takes us to where our salvation hinges – to the place of our 'yes', or our turning away from, Annunciation.

Here are a few lines…

Aren't there annunciations
Of one sort or another
In most lives?
Some unwillingly undertake great destinies,|
Enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending.

More often
Those moments
When roads of light and storm
Open from darkness in a man or woman,
Are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
And with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

Would it be true to say that the questions God asks us are always questions of being, rather than of knowing? And that simply recognizing those moments of announcing - stopping for a moment because something or someone wants our attention - can matter. Chances are, we will not see or hear an angel. But it will be clear that we are being asked to say either "yes" or "no"; to embrace or ignore what God has set before us…

Let us Pray

Mary, Mother of compassion, you yourself know that the gift of God's Spirit within the flesh carries costly, necessary responsibilities. Your brave responsiveness is beloved wherever communities struggle for dignity, justice, liberation and spiritual refreshment. Mary, Mother of Mercy, guide us upon the way.

O Holy One,

With a pounding heart, in those fearful moments in the presence of Mystery and awe, when we stop and listen to your Annunciation to us, help us turn toward the roads of light and storm. Open the gates for us. Open the gates again and again we pray.

by Edwin Muir

The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Traveled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.

See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other's face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He's come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on his wings.

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way.
Sound's perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.

But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

Reflections by Patty Wudel

For me the power of this poem comes in the intensity of the encounter between Mary and the angel. The sense of totality in the meeting – the moment in which heaven and earth are met.

See, they have come together, see
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other's face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there.

As Mary and the angel stand rapt in their attention for one another, each one is changed – she is left with the impression of what? Angel as the face of God? While he is affected by the fullness of her humanity. In that moment's meeting, Muir points to the truth of incarnation – where humanity and divinity are held together – so that the meaning of each is known most fully only in their union.

Time is frozen in their gaze. The sense of awe, the bliss that from their limbs all movement takes and the intense physicality of their rapture – so great a wonder that it makes each feather on his wings tremble.

Muir is playing with this moment of divine conception: How does the Spirit come to Mary? As a word? As a feeling? As a physical encounter? How does annunciation bring about virgin birth?