Celebrating Mary’s Yes – the Annunciation
Today we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation, that moment in history when Mary, a young Jewish peasant woman, opened herself to the Word of God. Through this gesture of welcome the human community was able to see, hear and touch, Emmanuel, God among us.
Each day we too are offered the same invitation – to allow God to continue to become incarnate in our body, our life. This enables God to continue God’s mission of love in our world. As we sing in St Teresa’s prayer: Christ has no body now but ours. Today, we are the body of Christ, and through us the work Jesus began continues throughout the ages. As we celebrate this feast let us keep this in mind. Gathering Song:
A reading from the Gospel according to Luke.
Narrator Gabriel Mary In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestors and his reign will have no end.’ ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God.’ (Short Pause) ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her. (Luke 1:26-38) Ann Johnson shares a reflection on this text..
ANNUNCIATION
In those days when the people of Judea were oppressed in the reign of King Herod in the town of Nazareth there was a woman named Miryam.
Final Prayer
O God:
Enlarge my heart that it may be big enough to receive the greatness of your love. Stretch my heart that it may take into it all those who with me around the world believe in Jesus Christ. Stretch it that it may take into it all those who do not know him, but who are my responsibility because I know him. And stretch it that it may take in all those who are not lovely in my eyes, and whose hands I do not want to touch; through Jesus Christ my Saviour, Amen Prayer of an African Christian - Bread of Tomorrow |