Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you, spoke the angel. Our Lady gives her consent, and the Word is made flesh in her. She is preserved from the stain of sin because Jesus was to take His human nature from her. She is the “first fruit” of His redemptive act. She is the Immaculate Conception and of her was born the Christ. Our Lady can truly pray these words, as can we:
For me, kind Jesus, was Thy incarnation
Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life’s oblation
Thy death of anguish, and Thy bitter passion
For my salvation[i]
Annunciation by Fra Angelico On the left, Adam and Eve are being expelled from Paradise.
Mary received the first fruits of the Passion of Jesus
Blessed Columba Marmion elucidates this in this passage from Christ the Life of the Soul:
Christ loved His mother. Never has God so loved one who is simply a creature; never son loved his mother as Christ Jesus does. He has loved men so much, as He Himself has said, that He died for them and could not have given them more evidence of His love than that: “Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends.” But never forget this truth: that Christ died above all for His mother, to pay for her privileges. The unique graces that Mary has received are the first fruits of the Passion of Jesus. The most holy Virgin would not have enjoyed any prerogative without the merits of her Son; she is the greatest glory of Christ, because it is she who has received the most from Him. The Church makes us understand this doctrine very clearly when she celebrates the Immaculate Conception—the first, in time order, of the graces received by the Virgin. Read the collect prescribed for the Feast, and you will see that this singular privilege is granted to the Virgin because the death of Jesus, foreseen in the eternal decrees, has paid the price of it in advance: “O God, who, by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, prepared a worthy habitation for your Son, we beseech you that, as by the foreseen death of that same Son, you preserved her from all stain….” We can say that, out of all humanity, Mary was the first object of the love of Christ, even of the suffering Christ. It was above all for her, in order that grace might abound in her in unique measure, that Christ shed His precious blood.[ii]
Let us pray with the Church with Collect for the Mass of the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord:
O God, who willed that your Word
should take on the reality of human flesh
in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
grant, we pray,
that we, who confess our Redeemer to be God and man,
may merit to become partakers even in his divine nature.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen. [iii]
[i] “Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended.” The Summit Choirbook, #57| Hymnary.org. Accessed March 23, 2022. https://hymnary.org/hymnal/SUMMITCB.
“Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen”
[ii] Blessed Columba Marmion, Christ, The Life of the Soul, excerpt, trans. Alan Bancroft (Bethesda: Zaccheus Press, 2005), pp. 474-477
[iii] “Collect.” Readings for the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. Accessed March 24, 2022. http://www.liturgies.net/saints/annunciation/eucharist.htm.
Posted for the Solemnity of the Annunciation
March 25, 2022
