And all is centred on Mary, as destined to be mother of the Holy One. She must have been quite speechless at the news!”
“I’m sure,” exclaimed Mariko, “I’d have been quite speechless if I’d been in her place.”
“And I, too,” added Chieko. “The very thought of it makes me speechless with emotion.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “that’s why the angel doesn’t stop there. He no doubt feels it necessary to smooth over the situation and to distract Mary’s attention from herself to someone else. So he tells her of a similar favour that has just been granted by God to her cousin Elizabeth, who is to become mother of Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist. Then at last Mary recovers her power of speech and gives her answer, in words that form the second prayer of the Angelus, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word’.”
“What do those words mean?” asked Iwao. “They seem to my mind a rather formal way of saying ‘Yes’. The opening words, in particular, sound like the formal way of ending a business letter, ‘I am, sir, your humble servant.’”
“You may well be right,” I agreed. “In such a moment of deep emotion Mary can only fall back on some formal expression she recalls from the Old Testament. It is no empty formality she is using, but one charged with a deeper meaning than it has ever contained before. On such a solemn occasion we feel ordinary, informal words are too weak to express our feelings of joy or sorrow, and so we take refuge from our speechlessness in some such formal expression.”
“What do you mean,” asked Nobuo, “by saying that Mary recalled words from the Old Testament? Were there any similar occasions like this in the Old Testament?”
“Yes,” I answered, “we find many similar occasions, though none quite like it. The very origin of the people of Israel comes out of such an occasion, when Abraham is called by God, and he replies, ‘Here I am.’ The origin also of the kingdom of Israel can be dated from such an occasion, when the boy Samuel is called by God and he replies, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ The call of the great prophet Isaiah, who foretells both the birth and the subsequent sufferings of the Messiah, also comes about in such a manner, when he sees a vision in the temple and hears a divine voice, ‘Whom shall I send?’ and he answers, ‘Here I am, send me!” But I think Mary is specially thinking of the mother of Samuel, Anna, who also speaks of herself as ‘the handmaid of the Lord’. Anyhow, allowing for the formality of her words, what they come down to is, as Iwao says, a simple ‘Yes’. It reminds me of the similar ‘Yes’ which every bride utters on the occasion of her wedding. It’s such a simple word, and yet it determines her whole future, as from now on she is no longer alone but one with her husband. In this one word Mary accepts the Word of God and becomes at once bride of the Holy Spirit and mother of the Word incarnate.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked Hiroshi, “that Mary was bride and mother in no ordinary human way in relation to Joseph, but in a miraculous way by the power of God? Or may we also understand the gospel account as a metaphorical or allegorical explanation of the divine origin of Jesus, while his human origin comes from Joseph and Mary?”
“That isn’t how the Church has always understood this passage,” I corrected him. “Such an allegorical explanation would look like a deliberate deceit on the part either of Luke or of Mary herself. But when it is accepted in its literal meaning, as a miraculous intervention by God in human history, it is indeed wonderful, both for Mary herself and for all who receive the account in a spirit of faith. It shows her as mother of Jesus in time, while he is also Son of God in eternity. It shows her as at once virgin and mother, and so we call her Blessed Virgin and Mother of God. It shows in her the twin ideals of simple innocence, as virgin, and profound experience, as mother. So she is at once representative of all women and unique in herself. She is at once a simple maiden, the simplest of all maidens, and, as her cousin Elizabeth goes on to greet her, ‘blessed among all women’, because of the child in her womb. She utters a simple human word, and so she becomes mother of the divine Word.”
“It’s really wonderful,” exclaimed Mariko. “I’m sure it happened in the very way it’s described in the gospel. And I feel so happy my name is Mariko, like Mary. Perhaps if Mary had been a Japanese girl, she’d have been named Mariko, like me.”
“Either that,” I responded with a smile, “or Chieko. For Mary is also called Seat of Wisdom, in becoming mother of the Word, who is also the wisdom of the Father. And Chieko means child of wisdom. But now I must turn to the third prayer of the Angelus, which is based on the words of John in the famous prologue to his gospel, ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’ This shows the practical outcome of Mary’s consent, when she conceives the divine Word by the Holy Spirit, in what theologians call the Incarnation.”
“What does that word, ‘Incarnation’, mean?” asked Nobuo. “It sounds so difficult and abstract, the sort of word that fills the mind of Iwao with problems.”
“It only sounds abstract,” I replied. “But its meaning is the opposite of abstract. It refers to the way God has become man, the divine Word has assumed human nature, the infinite has become finite, and the eternal has entered our world of space and time. It is the heart of every paradox and can only be stated in paradoxical form. We think of the eternity of God as extending endlessly from the remote past into the remote future, but here we find it restricted to a moment in time. We think of the infinity of God as extending without limit in all directions, but here we find it contracted to a point in the womb of a virgin. We think of God as the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator, but here we find his power reduced to the weakness and speechlessness of an infant. We think of the Father as above all, but here we find the Son within and beneath all, humbling himself, as Paul says, to the form of a servant. All this he does to show us how much he loves us, and how much he wants to be with us, as one of us, even in our poverty and suffering.”
“What you say,” commented Iwao, “sounds like a poem, or a hymn. What most impresses me is the thought of the Father as God above all and the Son as man within and beneath all. Somehow I feel myself included in the Son, and so the love of the Father reaches down to me as well.”
“That’s precisely what Christians believe,” I affirmed. “It isn’t for himself but for the salvation of mankind that the Word is made flesh. So his name, as announced by the angel, is Jesus, which means Saviour. Finally, to bring this discussion to an end, after having made these three prayers of the Angelus, with three verses of Scripture and three repetitions of the ‘Hail Mary’, we go on to pray that God may pour forth his grace into our hearts, that we also, to whom the mystery of the Incarnation has been made known by the message of the angel, may by the passion and cross of Jesus be brought to the glory of his resurrection. It is while we are saying this final prayer in our hearts that the bell continues ringing in our ears. And this is how we pray the Angelus not only at midday but also in the morning when we wake up and at evening before we go to bed. So it might be a good idea for us to say this prayer before going to bed tonight.”
Where was he born?
It was a lovely bright morning when we gathered in the sitting-room after breakfast. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a breeze of wind in the trees.
“It’s just like Christmas morning,” exclaimed Mariko, “though I imagine it was in the night-time that Jesus was born, and in December – whereas now it’s July. But it’s all the same. And it’s so appropriate for our discussion on the birth of Jesus.”
“As a matter of fact,” I remarked, “we don’t know exactly when Jesus was born, except that it must have been during the night, when the shepherds were watching their sheep on the hills near Bethlehem. We don’t even know if it was winter, let alone the month of December. The time was only decided three centuries later, when the feast of Christmas was instituted by the Church to replace the pagan festival of mid-winter, known as the Saturnalia. We aren’t even sure of the year, though it is from the birth of Christ that we date the Christian era. That was only decided some five centuries later by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who was unfortunately wrong in his calculations.