Buona Festa! I realize that we are more or less approaching the end of this happy feast day, but I wanted to be sure and get my two cents in before the Solemnity expires completely. For those who haven't had their breviaries handy today, March 25th is exactly nine months before December 25th, which is of course Christmas. Put two and two together. I'll wait....
Yes, indeed, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. What usually happens nine months before a birth? How was this event different in the particular case of Jesus Christ? Bingo. Today is the day that the Church celebrates the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the apparition of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, and her humble acceptance of God's plan for her.
In my opinion, this feast is of particular importance to modern society, and, so say I, ought to be a major tool for re-evangelizing the West, as nearly everyone in the Church believes we must do. Why is this the case? Well, there are two dimensions in which I see this feast as one of paramount importance to contemporary Western society:
First, there is the "Fiat" dimension. In Mary's simple statement, "let it be done to me according to your word," I believe the contemporary West, if it is truly willing to engage in any degree of self-reflection, my find its true and stark antithesis. That is to say, Mary's "Fiat" (Latin for "let it be [so]") is the expression of a very important and very deeply Christian sentiment that is very nearly dead in this civilization of ours. On the contrary, the defining maxim of Western society as it now stands is "let it be done to me according to my word." The West has become spiritually paralyzed the more it has become materially wealthy. Where there is material prosperity, faith becomes a true challenge, and so it is in our society. We are at the crossroads. One path, wide and level, leads to perdition; the other, straight and narrow, leads to salvation. The "Fiat" will reveal which is which.
The second dimension, perhaps of even greater importance, is the Incarnational dimension, if you want to call it that (honestly, I'm not sure I do). Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that today is the day Catholics believe Jesus became Man, and it has been today for many centuries. I have never honestly heard anyone propose that Jesus was not human until Christmas, that Jesus had not yet become a human person until His birth. Rather, it seems to be the constant and continuous thought of the entire Church that Jesus has been a man since the moment of His conception. Consider the tremendous pro-life meaning present in that belief!
I'm not exactly sure why today is not a huge day for promoting the pro-life cause in the Church. The fact seems to be that a great many Catholics do not accept the Church's belief that human life begins at conception, and yet it is the belief of the Catholic Church that Jesus became a human being today, nine months before He was born. The two notions cannot be reconciled. Either the Incarnation happened today, or it happened at some other point between today and Christmas. That simply is not what the Church teaches. Today ought to be a day of great zeal and evangelization, to renew and re-evaluate our commitment to the cause of protecting human life. Today, the day that the most important of all human lives began, ought to be the day the entire Church commits herself to the purpose of defending human life from conception to natural death. Why it isn't, I don't know. Keep it in your prayers.
Also, consider this:
And also this:
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