The Annunciation and the Visitation

Continuing Fouard's Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Chapter III: The Incarnation

I. The Annunciation

Luke i. 26-38; John i. 1-18

Ave Maria, gratia plena. J-J Tissot.

Six months after the conception of John, Gabriel received of God the new Mission.  This time it was neither to the Temple nor to the holy city that he must needs be take himself, but to Nazareth,1 an obscure village of Galilee.  He was sent thither to a young kinswoman of Elizabeth, named Mary, who was betrothed to a descendant of the House of David called Joseph.  Sprung likewise from the seed of the Great King, she was, according to the testimony of Tradition, the daughter of Joachim and Anna, and had but one sister, named like herself, Mary.  Her parents, being deprived of male offspring, had been forced, in order to ensure the legal transmission of their property, to affiance the two sisters to two young men of the same lineage.

We do not know what combination of circumstances had banished these descendants of the Kings of Israel from Bethlehem, the home of their family; yet we must believe that, sharing in the destinies of their race, they had all fallen into poverty and obscurity; for neither their ancestry nor the prophecies which promised a the throne to a Son of David awoke the morbid suspicions of Herod.  The lives of the betrothed pair in the retired village of Nazareth were passed in complete separation from each other, and in a state bordering upon destitution.  Joseph was a carpenter; Mary worked, as he did, with her hands.  Thus, then, it was an humble dwelling-place, this cottage of Joachim and Anna, which the Angel from Heaven visited; for, in accordance with the custom of the daughters of Judah, Mary was expected to seclude herself in the privacy of her home from the day on which her troth was plighted.

But it was not merely for these few days that Mary had hoped to shelter her virginity within that lowly retirement.  A light, which never before shone upon the mothers of Israel, had discovered to her the value of perpetual continence and she was resolved never to know man. How or where she had to reconcile this inspiration from Heaven with the promise made for her by her parents?  It was a period of perplexity and an agonising ordeal, this to which Mary was subjected from the time of her betrothal, and it was destined to cause her an even more profound trouble on the day of the Angelic Message.

A little to the westward of Nazareth there is a fountain which bears the name of Mary. The Greeks have erected close at hand their Church of the Annunciation.  They hold that the Angel uttered his salutation to the Virgin on that spot, when at evening she had set out from the village on her way thither to draw water.  This legend, taken from the Proto-gospel of Saint James, is not based upon any reliable foundation, and Christian art is more truly inspired when it represents the Virgin as kneeling in the privacy of her chamber at the hour in which the Angel appeared to her.

Doubtless by those same vows of chastity she had hasten the day of the coming of the Messiah, when the celestial messenger appeared before her eyes and said:

"Hale, full of grace, the Lord is with you; you' are blessed among all women."

Yet, having heard this, she was troubled at his saying, and she thought within herself what could be the meaning of such a salutation.  But the angel resumed:

"Fear not at all, Mary; you have found grace in God's sight.  And behold you shall conceive in your womb and shall bear our Son, and you shall give him the name of Jesus.  He shall be great, and He shall be called the Son of the Most-High, and the Lord shall give to Him the throne of David His father: He shall remain eternally in the house of Jacob, and of His Kingdom they shall be no end."

Mary had meditated much upon the Prophecies; she could not therefore mistake the purport of the Angel’s announcement.  This child, Son of the Most-High, King and Saviour of men for all eternity, this could only be the Messiah; and to her was to accrue the honour of bringing forth the Desired of Days.  But the daughter of David had resolved to remain a Virgin for God's sake, and despite this promise that she should be the Mother of a God she continued steadfast in her inspired design.

Unable to make the Angel’s words harmonise with this vow,

"How may this be," she replied, " since I know not to man?"

Gabriel immediately enlightened her.

"The Holy Ghost shall, upon you," he said, "and the Power of the Most-High shall enfold you within His Shadow; therefore it is that the Holy One which shall be borne of you shall be called the Son of God.  And behold your cousin Elizabeth also has conceived a son in old age; and it is now the sixth month for her who is called barren, because nothing is impossible unto God."

This was sufficient to ensure Mary's entire abandonment to the Will of the Almighty.  She bowed down before the Seraphic Messenger:

"I am the handmade of the Lord," she said; " let it be done unto me according to Thy word."

And forthwith the Angel withdrew from her sight.

What happened then in the little house of Nazareth?

In one line John has expressed the unspeakable thought:

"The Word was made flesh, and took up its habitation with us."
The Word, that is to say, the Eternal and substantial Utterance of God, His own, and only Son:

"A Son who was not born at the commandment of His Father but Who, by puissance and by plenitude, flashed forth from His Bosom, God of God, Light of Light."

Of the Word we can learn little enough from the three Evangelists; so intent are they upon tracing the footsteps upon the earth of the God made Man that they speak of His Divine nature but rarely; yet this is not at all the case with John.  The beloved Disciple of Jesus had drawn from the heart of his Master a relish and a perception of the highest Mysteries.  So when, following Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he took up his pen to write "that which his eyes had seen, his ears heard, that which his hands had touched of the Word of life," stifled in the thick atmosphere of the lower world of thought, he spurns the air with strong eagle-pinions, and rising far aloft above the earth and the heavens, he penetrates to the Throne of Him Whose life he would recount.  From those fearful heights his first words rang forth like a peal of thunder upon the ears of the Christians of Ephesus, who knelt in prayer and fasting round about him.

"In the beginning was the Word,  and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; He it is Who was with God in the beginning.
All things have been made by Him, and without Him is nothing made that has been made.
In Him was the life, and the life was the Light of men.
And the Word was made flesh,” adds Saint John; that is to say, has formed unto Himself a body out of the most pure blood of Mary, — the Eternal Father has produced, in the bosom of the Virgin, that same Son whom He has, from all eternity, begotten within His own Bosom.  In that all-happy moment, this blood, this virginal body found itself pervaded and absorbed by God:
"The Word was made flesh, that the flesh might become God."

And this union was not to be transitory; for the purpose of the Word is to consummate His union with man, "to dwell amongst us," "to pitch His tent in our midst," which is the force of the words used in the original text.  This last word of the Evangelist carries an allusion to the luminous cloud which had enveloped the Tabernacle long ago to show that Jehovah sojourned in the midst of His people.  In the time of Jesus, the sanctuary of Herod was empty of its Ark of the Covenant, nor did its curtain of glory any more screen the Holy Receptacle.  John shows how the Word did take up its abode in the midst of Israel, of a truth.  "He has pitched his tent in our midst," he says, "and we have seen His Glory," not blazing by brilliant intervals, as did that of the ancient Cloud, but streaming upon the world in rays of splendour, which are the effulgence of grace and truth, — Grace, by which we mean the Life divine that animates our souls; Truth, by which we mean the Light of God that illuminates them.

"We have all received of this fullness," he pursues; "a grace more abounding has succeeded the ancient gifts of Jehovah to the Jews." "Moses did but give us the Law, we have gained grace and truth by Jesus Christ.  Moses had never beheld Jehovah save through the splendrous mists of Sinai, — for never has anyone seen God; He, the one and only Son, (the only-begotten God, according to another reading), — He who, in the Bosom of God, exists in His very Presence, — He alone can declare to us, of Himself, what He is."

Such, in the eyes of Saint John, was the Salvation which the Son of Mary came to accomplish.  The Truth must, then, at Its Incarnation, illumine the eyes long blinded to the light; grace must flow in cleansing streams there where sin had soiled the very springs of our natural life; and the gaps word, embodied in our flesh, must repair the ruined handiwork of the Creative Word, of the cats word Which ones in the beginning.

II. The Visitation

In those days Mary, rising up, went in haste towards the mountainous country, to the city of Youttah.  What prompted her to undertake so long a journey? — one so unusual, too, when we recall how strict was the seclusion which custom had imposed upon a young Jewess after her betrothal?  Are we to believe that Joseph, having had a knowledge of Mary’s state, rejected her, and that she sought consolation in the society of Elizabeth, as well as escape from the hard-heartedness of men; or, better still, was she not led by a longing to unbutton her heart, which was now over-brimming with this new gladness, and so sought the company of a soul capable of understanding her?  Elizabeth shared with her in these bountiful blessings of the Lord; for she had been designated by the Angel as Mary's natural confidant.  Was there not in all this an adequate motive for the Virgin's disregard of those rigorous Jewish customs?

It took only a few days for Mary to go from Nazareth to Youttah.  She traversed Judaea, screening herself beneath the veil of a humility already perfect, indeed, so forgetful was she of the eminence to which she had been elevated over all Creation, that she gladly humbled herself thus, in order to discourse with her kinswoman of the divine honours vouchsafed to them.  Wherefore, so soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s salutation within her dwelling, the child leaped within her, and revealed to her the presenceof the Incarnate God.

The Visitation. J-J Tissot.

"You are blessed from among all women," she cried out, "and the fruit of your womb is blessed.  And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come unto me?"

This knowledge of the secrets of Heaven Elizabeth owed to the Precursor, who was aroused within the maternal bosom, that so he might salute Jesus; this is what she declared, adding,

" So soon as the voice of your salutation it came to my ears, the child that I bear leaped in my breast." Then reflecting upon the incredulity and chastisement of her husband, which set the serene faith of Mary in so much higher relief,

" Blessed," she cried, "is she who hath believed that the word which the Lord has spoken to her shall be accomplished."

Amid these transports of surprise and joy Mary remained calm and recollected; her lips opened at last, but it was to praise God for this new largess of His bounty toward her, for His providence toward the world, for His merciful goodness to all Israel; these three ideas sustain the burden of the whole Magnificat.

Magnificat anima mea. J-J Tissot

"My soul doth glorify the Lord,
And my spirit is made exceeding glad
In God my Saviour.
Because He hath regarded the lowliness
Of His handmaid:
and behold all generations
shall proclaim me Blessed.
For the All-Powerful has done great things to me:
and Holy is His Name;
and His mercy reacheth from age to age,
unto those who fear him."

Turning from the marvellous effects of the Eternal Holiness, the Love Eternal, in her regard, Mary’s glance sweeps over the world; it seems to her flashing vision as lying prostrate at the feet of that Almighty One, Whom she knew she was soon to bring forth and unto it.


"He hath showed forth the Might of His arm,
He hath scattered those who were proudly elated
in the thoughts of their hearts.
He casteth the powerful headlong from their thrones,
and hath lifted up the humble.
He hath filled the hungry with food,
and sent away the rich with empty hands."

This great upheaval in human destinies must result in the triumph of the veritable Israel, and in this thought the sacred Canticle finds its final note of joy.

"He hath taken under His protection
Israel, His servant,
Being mindful of His mercies to Abraham
and to His people, from generation to generation."

Nor need we marvel at the sight of Mary pouring forth her feeling under this poetic form.  In the East, where song is the natural expression of every emotion, only a few thoughts are requisite to the development of a poem.  Inspired simply by the remembrance of the hymns of Israel, and by the grace of which she was a spotless Vessel, the Virgin, uplifted upon the wings of the Divine Spirit, drew from her enraptured soul the measure of this Canticle, as simple as it is sublime.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam