Today we commemorate the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This feast day, coming on the 25th of March, rarely occurs on Sundays. We are fortunate today that we can celebrate to the fullest the wonderful message of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was received by this humble, young maiden so long ago.

It was the Anglican 17th century poet and priest, John Donne, who said. "They hurt religion as much that ascribe too little to the Blessed Virgin as they who ascribe too much." It is unfortunate that in much of the Protestant form of Christianity the Blessed Virgin is practically ignored. On the other hand, we can understand how a reaction of this sort was bound to take place because of the medieval Catholic Church's tendency to over-emphasize the role of Saint Mary.

In the Anglican religious tradition, there is a balance. There are two feast days in the traditional Book of Common Prayer commemorating the Blessed Virgin. They are the feasts of the Purification and the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin. They both, in a truly Biblical sense, relate the meaning and the role of Saint Mary to her vocation and to her Son Jesus Christ. The early Church was interested in Mary not for her sake, but primarily as a sign and a guarantee of the reality of the Incarnation. The Virgin Mary is the historical, personal testimony of the actual coming of God in the flesh. This is her real role and purpose in regard to the devotional emphasis placed by the Church upon her.

The average person in the 1st Century had no trouble believing in the world of the supernatural. The common mind accepted fully the spiritual dimension of existence, and believed in a multitude of gods and goddesses. They did not have a scientific view of the world. For them the notion that a god would appear and disappear and come and go was a commonplace thing. What they found so difficult to accept was the teaching that a divine being would divest himself of divinity and enter into human life. Human life, as everyone knows, is frail and finite. Therefore, it was beyond comprehension that divinity would take upon itself humanity. As St. Paul said, 'the story of Jesus was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews.

The birth of Jesus of the Virgin Mary established for the early Church the guarantee that God really became a human being. We continue to express this truth in the art and the devotional practices of the Church. We think of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Holy Mother of God who bears in her arms the baby Jesus. We are beginning to go off on the wrong track if we have a statue or a painting of St. Mary alone without Jesus. Anyone who has a theological background understands that the Blessed Virgin should always be portrayed with the Holy Child Jesus, except of course for the Annunciation. When St. Mary is separated from her involvement with the Incarnation, the ancient tendency for nature worship, and the elevation of the maid of Nazareth to the Queen of Heaven begin to work their way in. We then ascribe too much to the Blessed Virgin.

In a similar fashion, in the 20th Century the Virgin Mary is still the guarantee of the Incarnation, only from the other side of the coin. Today we have no trouble accepting as historically true the fact that Jesus was a human being and that He lived in human history. Unless someone is totally divorced from common sense he cannot deny the humanity of Jesus.

A very sophisticated theologian who used to amaze himself with his own paradoxes once said, "If Jesus did not exist there would have to have been someone else who had the same name." We accept the history of Jesus, but we have a great deal of trouble dealing with His divinity. Our view of life , no matter how religious we really seem to be, has excluded the world of spirit. We are all children of the Age of Enlightenment. Our minds assign reality to the things of this Earth, the things that we can scientifically analyze and observe and experience. The divine realm of the reality of God has been removed from our habit of thought.

Over the last several hundred years there has been the growing heresy which would deny divinity to Jesus. We say, "Yes, of course He is a great prophet, a great religious leader, one who reveals God, one shows God, one who brings God." However, we are less willing to say, "He is God." This is, of course, the Christian position. This is what the Athanasian, the Apostles, and the Nicene Creeds tell us: That Jesus is God and Man in one and the same person. Every heresy in the Church stems form the unwillingness to accept the divinity of Jesus.

St. John, the patron of our parish church, said anyone who does not accept the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is anti-Christ. Those are hard words and we need to take them seriously. What the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us today, and the reason we commemorate her as the chief of saints, is that this truly was a mysterious, miraculous birth without the agency and the biological participation of a human father. Once we accept Jesus as the Son of God, the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth makes a lot of sense. What better way could God bring about what is called in theology the hypostatic union between God and Man. It is all very simple. A three-year-old could figure it out, but a sophisticated, educated 21st century American finds it very difficult.

If we do not accept the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Christ even though we cannot understand it, and if we do not accept the facts of the Incarnation even though we cannot explain them, then we deny the absolutely essential meaning of Jesus in our lives and we take apart the fabric of His continuing body, the Church. If Jesus is not really God, if He is just one more great religious personality, then what He said and what He did is not etched into eternal reality and the salvation He offered the world becomes a relative thing. When Jesus established His Church for all time, against which the gates of Hell cannot prevail, He established a faith in Him. He established a form of morality based upon Him. He established a priesthood to continue to represent Him. He established a series of sacraments to communicate His power. None of these sacred ordinances are subject to alteration by each successive generation. However, the human tendency is always to rebel against God. We deny His revelation and attempt to follow our own wills instead of His Will.

Therefore, in the Church's teaching and tradition the Blessed Virgin Mary is also seen as the second Eve. This is also why she has such a high position in our devotions and in our thoughts. The first Eve disobeyed God. When the message of the angel was received by Mary, she reversed the whole process. She was the first human being to completely and totally say yes to God. This holy maiden in all her simplicity and purity in response to the awesome message form God responded, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word."

The Annunciation is the first act in the drama of the Incarnation. We are to follow Mary's example, as we are to follow the example of all the saints in virtuous and godly living. We believe that the Blessed Virgin and all of the saints are praying for us and helping to lead us into a life of sanctity and holiness. Pious tradition tells us that not only does Mary have an immaculate heart, reversing the sinful disposition of all humanity, but that, also by God's grace, she has been elevated into the highest part of heaven. She is at the throne of God with her blessed Son as described by Dante in his classic Divine Comedy. We believe that her prayers are heard by the blessed Lord and that she intercedes for us who still have to struggle through our pilgrimage here on Earth. By believing in Jesus and by loving Mary we are drawn closer and closer to God and we are able to say, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."

With all the Saints we give thanks to God for the glorious Incarnation of His Son, Jesus Christ, which has been revealed to us through the faith and obedience of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We rejoice in the truth as spoken by the angel who said, "For with God nothing shall be impossible".