24 march: gabriel archangel

tomorrow is the feast of the annunciation, one of the most important events in the church year, and one which is sadly ignored by many. it is the commemoration of the incarnation. it is the day on which the archangel gabriel first said to the virgin, "hail mary, full of grace: the lord is with thee." in the west gabriel is commemorated the day before the feast; in the east the day after. since angels are immortal, there is of course no day of their repose; they are instead commemorated in connection with their messages.

i have not read angels and demons, so i do not know if there is a lot of nonsense going around about angels which dan brown has popularized as he did with the nonsense about mary magdalene in the da vinci code. i will not therefore try to enter into any big discussion of angels, but rather focus on the message.

the message, of course, is that mary was to bear a child who would be the son of the most high, who would save the people from all their sin. this child, whom the angel gabriel said would be called jesus, was a wonder to mary: "how can this be, since i have known not a man?" he continues to be a wonder, even to us today.

in that child god took on flesh, as the church believes is described in one of the psalms for lauds of gabriel's feast: "the lord is king, and hath put on glorious apparel; the lord hath put on his apparel, and girded himself with strength." the apparel which the high king of heaven put on was flesh, and in that apparel he showed the true glory of man.

the writer of the hebrews would describe the role of the virgin by quoting psalm 39 (ev40):8: "a body thou hast prepared for me."

in the fourth century when the church struggled mightily with the wonder who was this child, she produced the nicene creed, expanding on gabriel's claim that "that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of god," with the words "the only begotten son of the father, god from god, light from light, very god of very god." in the fifth century at the council of ephesus the church would insist that the child born to mary was truly all that the creed claimed, from his conception. mary would henceforth be called the "theotokos," the one who bore god.

it is easy to lose the humanity of jesus in these words, especially when the creed is separated from the liturgy. in the liturgy, you see, we say that not only do we receive at the communion "the only begotten son of the father," who sounds to be very spiritual, but we receive the body and the blood: body from body, blood from blood, born of the virgin.

now sadly enough, we sometimes disdain the very flesh which god took on. (see te deum: "thou, having taken it upon thyself to deliver man, didst not disdain the virgin's womb.") we have bumper stickers claiming that "we are spiritual creatures trapped in a physical body," or "spiritual creature having a physical experience." we become jealous of angels. this has especially been true in the time we call "the enlightenment," when milton would make satan the real hero of his epic poem. it is helpful to recall what jung said about heroes: that they are boys, not real men.

but real men (including women) are made in the image of god. when that image became tarnished, god took on flesh to show us once again what our true glory could be.

next week we will observe the great three days, when more than any other time that glory was revealed. looking forward to that time, enjoy this basque carol.