The Annunciation

Luke’s account of the Annunciation ends abruptly with the sentence ‘and the angel left her’.  What then?  Presumably, Mary sat down and took a little time to consider all that Gabriel had told her.  How did she feel?  She was suddenly facing a very different future from whatever she’d previously imagined.  And that new future?  She couldn’t have imagined even roughly how her life would unfold now.

There are times when we step into the unknown in life: marrying, moving house, changing  job, becoming parents. When we stand at the beginning of a road in life, like Mary did when the angel left her, we know exactly what and who we must leave behind us.  We know what it is we’ll be giving up and losing.  However, we don’t know about the new opportunities we will have.  We don’t know who we’ll meet, what we’ll do, what we’ll gain and how we’ll grow.

Some changes in direction are sought and eagerly anticipated.  Others… less so. Sometimes we can think too much about things; we can weigh up the pros and cons until we become quite fearful.  Fearful because we forget that – although we may be without friends initially – we are never alone because we are never without God.  Mary must have been looking at a lonely future: at best (so it seemed) Joseph would  break off their engagement.  There was the possibility that she would be shunned by so many – but she’d had Gabriel’s assurance that  ‘The Lord is with you… you have won God’s favour’. I imagine she also knew these words of Jeremiah’s, which serve us well when our future is, at best, unclear:

For I know well the plans I have made for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe!  Plans to give you a future full of hope.  When you call me, when you go to pray to me, I will listen to you.  When you look for me, you will find me.  When you seek me with all your heart, you will find me with you, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 29:11-14

What’s your strongest virtue?

Now there’s a question!  It might not seem exactly Lenten in character to spend time considering our virtues – but read on then reconsider… Years ago, the priest who most often heard my confessions used a little book that contained short passages of scripture, which he’d look up and quote from as necessary.

I remember one day – there must have been a particularly long queue – I caught myself trying to guess  which little passage he’d be reading to me.  I guessed correctly (he had, after all, had cause to read me that passage more than once before…) but more significantly, I noticed that his little book was indexed not according to vice, but according to virtue.

So say, for example, he had a penitent who was struggling against pride, he’d look up humility. That discovery brought home to me the fact that in spiritual combat, we need to fight vice with virtue.  But how can we win the battle if we don’t even know which weapons we possess?  That’s why we need to consider seriously which virtues we already hold in fair measure; which swords, as it were, are strong and true.  There will be other virtues that are not so strong in us.

They’re like weapons that we’re not used to handling, possibly because we aren’t troubled much by their opposing vice.  There may even be virtues that are rather alien to us, or about which we have all but forgotten.  They are the rusty weapons which, in all honesty, cannot be relied upon in battle and if we need to use them, we’ve lost.

It’s a little exercise that ‘s worth a few moments’ thought, especially as we come towards Passiontide.  Have a look at your own virtues (in a spirit of humility, of course, giving thanks to God for its presence) and see: what’s strong in you?  Can you see your strongest virtue straight away?  Why do you think it’s strong in you?  How do you use it to fight its opposing vice? Consider other virtues, especially ones you need for ‘battle’ and could perhaps sharpen a little.  Prayer and practice are the whetting stones for the swords of virtue.  God gives us what we need, if only we ask it of Him.

‘Remember me at the Lord’s altar’

A great many mothers number among the communion of saints, (the opportunities of sanctification are so plentiful, you see), but one who springs to mind for her patience and perseverance is St Monica, the mother of St Augustine.

Just as he is infamous for giving his mother a hard time, so she is famous for sticking by him (even when he tried to give her the slip and sailed for Rome without her) and waiting in prayerful hope for his conversion. When Monica was aware that her end was nigh, she said to Augustine*, “Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be”.

This last request to her son really struck me when I first read Augustine’s confessions. He himself does not dwell on it, rather on ‘how she had ever burned with anxiety respecting her burial-place, which she had provided and prepared for herself by the body of her husband’, and his thankfulness that this had ceased to vex her in the end.

Perhaps he doesn’t comment on it because it was – by then – the most natural thing in the world to honour his mother by remembering her ‘at the Lord’s altar’. It seems the least we can do, doesn’t it, to remember always in prayer the one who gave birth to us and who has sacrificed more than we will ever know for us?

This Mothering Sunday, among the cards and the flowers (here’s hoping) and the breakfast in bed (dreaming now), there’s an opportunity to consider how we are keeping the fourth commandment not only with respect to our mothers, but – as we hear the Gospel of the prodigal son – our fathers too.

The importance of ‘honour thy father and mother’ is reflected in its position within the Decalogue. It comes immediately after the three commandments which deal with our relationship with God, and before ‘thou shalt not kill’. In childhood, it meant obedience and respect, but what does it mean for us now? Relationships are essentially dynamic things; they never stay still.

We are always growing closer to or further from people, and our relationship with our parents is no different. We may not see them as often as we would like but no matter how far apart we are, no matter how busy our lives are, we can always, at the very least, remember them in our prayers.

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*Confessions, book IX chapter 11

Image: Altar and tomb of St Monica of Hippo

An Awareness of Angels

On my kitchen window stand the guardian angels.  They are window-transfer copies of beautiful mosaics from St John’s Church in Warminster (and you can see them for yourself here).

St Michael is thrusting his spear into (Satan, represented as) a dragon, but from the amount of effort he seems to be exerting, you’d think – if you couldn’t see below his knees – that he was absent-mindedly hoeing his veg patch.

As I washed the dishes and wondered about this, I thought that perhaps the constraints of the narrow frame made the artist portray St Michael in this pose.  Then again, perhaps it was to make him comparable with the serenity of Gabriel et al that he was made to seem so placid… then, amongst the pots and pans, it came to me – perhaps that’s how much effort it takes for an angel to carry out a task that would leave us exhausted at best. The angels of God are especially prevalent in our Lenten liturgy.

On the first Sunday of Lent, the devil tempts Jesus by reminding him of the angels whom God had commanded ‘to keep you in all your ways.  They shall bear you upon their hands lest you strike your foot against a stone…’  Both Matthew and Mark (though not Luke, admittedly) tell of the angels who ministered to Jesus during his 40 days in the wilderness.  This Sunday we’ll hear of an angel appearing to Moses, then next Sunday, just immediately before we hear of the prodigal son, Jesus declares, ‘I tell you, there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents’. Then, of course, in Gethsemene, ‘there appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him’.

From the annunciation through the nativity, the wilderness, Jesus’ public ministry, to the cross, the resurrection and ascension, there are angels flitting in and out of the story of Jesus’ life… and so too do they surround us from day to day.  I wonder though, if our guardian angels weren’t such generous spirits, how many might comment on a job-satisfaction survey that they were over-worked and under-valued? St Jerome wrote of our guardian angels, ‘So valuable to heaven is the dignity of the human soul that every member of the human race has a guardian angel from the moment the person begins to be’.  Although our guardian angels are widely credited for protecting us from physical harm, I should think that they spend most of their efforts guarding our souls from peril.

We know that the closer we draw to God, the more jealous the Tempter becomes.  At this stage in Lent, then, we should not be surprised to find him particularly busy.  Perhaps our initial enthusiasm has worn off a bit, but we’re not far enough in to see any progress and we still have a long way to go.  Remember the image of St Michael.  When we look ahead and foresee a day of battle, St Michael sees a walk in the park. Angels of God, defend us on this day of battle!