The Feast of the Annunciation is a Royal Feast, one of the 12 Royal Feasts of the Ecclesiastical Year. This is a good opportunity for us to reflect upon the Virgin Mary’s mission, her life of prayer, and our spiritual journey through Great Lent.
It is fitting now for us to remember the manner in which the Virgin Mary lived in the Temple in Jerusalem for 12 years prior to the moment of the Annunciation. This period of 12 years was dedicated to the reading of the Holy Scriptures and other holy writings, to prayer and meditation, in hesychastic seclusion in preparation for receiving her mission. The Virgin Mary’s life in the Temple showed her to be worthy of the Good News brought by the Archangel Gabriel. The Archangel’s greeting shows the purity, innocence, and inner beauty with which the Virgin had adorned herself through her prayer in the Temple. It shows her to be “full of grace.” It is only in this state that she can receive the news that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). And she will respond in the name of all humanity, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). She will offer herself with her entire being to the work of God, receiving through faith that which reason could not comprehend.
This special calling of the Virgin was not without trials. Righteous Simeon’s announcement at the Meeting of the Lord that “a sword will pierce through your own soul” (Luke 2:35) was fulfilled. The Virgin who received the Announcement in the Temple became, through her trials, the Mother of God who received the Crucified in her arms, but also the Mother of all of us who believe in the Crucified and Risen One.
This “becoming” of the Mother of God is a model for every Christian. God allows trials for everyone for his/her own “becoming.” And we will pass through trials with the help of the One who became our Mother at the feet of her Son’s Cross. The prayers of the Church are full of this faith in the power of the intercession and help of the Mother of God.
In the Paraklesis to the Theotokos we beseech the help and protection of the Mother of God in all the troubles and weaknesses of our life. We call her “a protection and shelter, treasury of healings, intercessor and wall unshakable, protector of Christians.” In the Akathist to the Protection of the Theotokos we say that her hands are ever raised in prayer from her love and mercy toward us. In the Akathist to the Theotokos, the Joy of all Who Sorrow, we all beseech her to help us in troubles: “O Most Holy Lady Theotokos, higher than the cherubim and more honored than the seraphim, Virgin chosen of God, the joy of all who sorrow; grant also comfort to us who are in the midst of troubles, for apart from you we have no other rescue and help. You alone are the mediator of our joy and as the Mother of God and the Mother of mercies, standing before the throne of the Holy Trinity, you can help us. For no one who prays to you in faith will be ashamed.” We affirm our faith in her quickly answered prayers to her Son, and we put our hope in her as the Mother of all Christians, especially of those in trials and tribulations!
† Metropolitan Nicolae
