Angelic Greeting

The drama of the Angelus... a sermon for Advent 4b

SJF • Advent 4b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth...

Because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year — next Sunday — our Advent season is unusually long, and includes a full week between this, the last Sunday of Advent, and Christmas Day. But even a week seems far too short to jump from our Gospel account of the angel’s visit to Mary in Nazareth, to the birth of the child, conceived in that instant, in Bethlehem of Judea. And of course it is only the fact of liturgical time travel that gives us this drastically shortened one-week pregnancy. If we look back to March 25, the full nine months prior to Christmas Day on December 25, we will find this same gospel passage proclaimed on the feast of the Annunciation, where it most properly belongs. Still, every three years we get to hear this gospel on the last Sunday before Christmas — as a reminder of the momentous choice made by God, and the equally earth-shaking response made by Mary.
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Wrapped up in this gospel scene is another sort of Christmas present. Here it is that we find the origin of the prayer that many know by the name, the Hail Mary — or its Latin form, Ave Maria. It is also known as “The Angelic Salutation” because the angel Gabriel is the one who gives us the opening line of this famous prayer, right there in our gospel today, although we heard it in a more modern translation: “Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with you.” (We will get to hear the rest of this prayer on the Sunday before Christmas next year, when we hear of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, who says, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”)
Those two Scripture verses formed the original version of the Hail Mary as it was prayed for many centuries. (The part asking Mary to pray for us sinners now and the hour of our death was added by the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation.) The original form of the prayer comes entirely from the text of Scripture and is focused on grace and new life rather than on sin and death.
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And it is, after all, to that upbeat focus that this holy season calls us: it is the season of grace and new life. Now, there’s obviously much more going on in this gospel passage than just the angel Gabriel’s initial greeting. That is just what starts the encounter off, and the angel goes on to respond to Mary’s perplexity at the greeting, and further perplexity at the further explanation.
I’d like to look at this little scene of grace and new life through the lens of another prayer to which it gave rise. This prayer has formed a part of Christian culture for several centuries. It is connected with, and includes, the Hail Mary, but it plays out the whole scene as a kind of dramatic dialogue. It is a prayer that formed part of the daily life of many Christians, as they paused in the morning, and at midday, and dusk, quietly to recite this prayer to themselves as they heard the church bells toll. There was a time when it was commonly recited in many churches, including this one, but I think fewer and fewer have retained the memory of this pious and once popular devotion. You may know it by its Latin name, the Angelus, and you’ll find it printed on the last page of today’s bulletin, at the end of our worship, together with Millet’s famous painting of two farm-workers pausing in the field at the end of day to say the prayer together. We will use it today at the end of our worship as a prayer and a blessing.
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The prayer takes the form of a miniature three-scene drama in three couplets. The drama moves from the grace of invitation through acceptance and into its completion with the celebration of new life — much like those three readings from the book of the prophet Isaiah I spoke of on the last three Sundays.
The first couplet introduces the theme: greeting, grace and conception, setting the stage for what is to follow. The second, and pivotal, couplet represents the real drama in the story: as Mary accepts the angel’s news and what it might mean for her. In spite of her perplexity and confusion, she puts her whole trust in God, that God would not ask of her anything that she ought not do. Even knowing the impossibility of bearing a child while still a virgin, even knowing how the tongues would wag when an unmarried woman began to show her pregnancy — still Mary accepts God’s invitation and presents herself as open to the possibility: of becoming the mother of the holy child who will be known as the Son of God.
The final couplet, from the prologue to John’s Gospel, shows the completion and accomplishment of what has come before. Through Mary’s willingness to say Yes to God, Yes to the angelic greeting, the Word of God — the second Person of the Trinity, God from God, Light from Light, purely spiritual as God is Spirit, from before time and for ever — enters the world of matter and energy, and is made living, breathing, pulsing flesh, to dwell with us human beings as a human being. The life of God takes on human life.
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We observe this drama especially at this time of year, as we move from the invitation of Advent into the remembrance of the Incarnation on Christmas — in this last week of a short pregnancy from conception to delivery.
But this prayer, this Angelus, for many years served as a three-times-a-day reminder to people around the world, with the ringing of a church bell at morning, noon and dusk, to pause and remember and give thanks for this great mystery. I understand that the Irish radio still broadcasts the sound of the Angelus bell three times a day for the same reason, and perhaps you’ve heard the church bells ringing in your neighborhood from time to time that pattern of three times three, followed by nine bells during the saying of the final prayer. We will end our worship today with this traditional prayer, as a blessing and a reminder.
But I ask you not to let this be the only time you remember and give thanks for the mystery and blessing of the Incarnation that we will celebrate next weekend. Even if you do not hear the Angelus bell ring in the morning or at noon or at the close of day, let this sentiment stir in your heart, to give thanks to God, to the angel, and above all to Mary, for saying Yes to God when God asked of her a perplexing thing. May we too, always and everywhere, say Yes to God and serve him with such open, willing hearts, even when he asks a hard thing of us. Let our souls, like Mary’s soul, be the sanctuary of God, ringing bells or not, every day and every hour of our lives.+

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