Feast of the Annunciation: What Did the Angel Gabriel Tell Mary?

Today we celebrate the Annunciation when the angel Gabriel came, as a messenger from God, to ask her to become the Mother of Jesus Christ. Think of the humility of God who asks one of his creatures to become His Mother by bearing the Christ child, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. After you try to wrap your thoughts around that, consider what else the angel may have told Mary about her role in salvation.

God is no trickster. He doesn't try to fool us into doing His will. He wants our full assent knowing how difficult conforming our will to His may be. So how much did Gabriel reveal to Mary about the suffering she would share with her Son? Fulton Sheen believed that Mary knew the depth of pain and grief she was choosing. Here's how he describes it:

Mary’s participation in Christ’s suffering began with the annunciation, when she was asked to give God a human body, more properly, a human nature. In other words, will you make God capable of suffering? God though he was, he learned obedience in the school of suffering. God could know experimentally what suffering was only by taking a body. So the Blessed Mother is asked, ‘Will you make it possible for your creator to suffer?’ Think of a mother, for example, who gives to a young son or daughter an automobile at the age of nineteen, which a short time afterwards is the cause of a wreck and permanent injury. Would the mother ever forgive herself? And here Mary has to say yes, I will let him suffer.

I Love Being Catholic and Here's One Reason: The Liturgical Year

The 4th Sorrow of Mary: Jesus meets His mother on the road to Calvary

Every month, the Catholic Church offers us a devotion on which to focus. May is the month of Mary when we honor her with May processions filled with all the beautiful Marian hymns center stage. October is the month of the holy rosary.We recall the Battle of Lepanto when Pope Pius V called on all Christendom to pray the rosary to defeat the invading Muslim hordes. June and July are dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to His Precious Blood. 

September is a special month for me because it honors Mary's Seven Sorrows, a devotion I love.

The Feast of the Presentation: A Celebration of the Elderly

If there were a feast day for old folks, I'd say it's today, the feast of the Presentation. Who do we find at the temple praying and waiting for the Messiah? Two elderly Jews who go to the temple night and day.

The Holy Spirit promised the old man Simeon that he would not die without seeing the salvation of Israel. And when Mary and Joseph bring the child in fulfillment of the law, Simeon is there, called by the Holy Spirit, and he takes the child in his arms and says to Mary, "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted -- and you yourself a sword will pierce -- so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."