March 25, 2026
Today is the Annunciation. It is a recognition of the moment when the angel visited the Virgin Mary and announced to her that she would give birth to the Christ Child. This is a later addition to the church calendar and was made after December 25th was declared the birthday of Jesus by the Early Church. They simply counted backwards nine months then arrived at March 25th and decided that was the day when the visitant angel made the announcement to Mary. Not getting into the church politics that created this date and the random picking of December 25th as Jesus’s birthday, it is still amazing to contemplate what a great and enormous task was laid before Mary. The angel knew that Mary would be feeling this way and recommended that she go and visit her cousin Elizabeth, her quite aged cousin Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant with the child we would call John the Baptist. It was upon meeting Elizabeth that Mary’s confidence was buoyed and she sang the Magnificat. The Magnificat sees the grand reversal and that is indeed what we celebrate during Lent – how Jesus turns the world upside down, reverses all the things that we think in our idolatries are great, and we are humbled again by love. The purpose of this season is to knock ourselves down a peg or two and to realize that love and sacrifice and goodness are what saved us.
Let us pray: Father in Heaven, for Jesus’s sake, and remembering Mary’s great call and commitment, and remembering that she was just a kid, help us to humble ourselves to your great story of love that starts with a child Mary, and a humble birth in Bethlehem, and then a humiliating cross at Golgotha, and then a resurrection. Help us to embrace all facets of this great story of salvation. In Jesus’s Name, Amen.