The story line is straight forward: the young Virgin receives an angel and she accepts the task given to her. End of story. O pure Maid, you eluded nature’s laws, conceiving God in ways past understanding. You evaded things proper to mothers in childbirth, even if by nature you were prone to change.[1] We are
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Annunciation and the Call to Life-in-Death
The Annunciation, linked with the Cross, is a flat out rejection of this Darwinian way of thinking. When I affirm that my life is a series of deaths to self, I choose something other than “survival of the fittest” and “kill or be killed.” Rather, I make choices as a consumer, as a parent, as
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Emulating the Theotokos
The fact of veneration implies learning and the aspiration to emulate. Why, say, venerate the soldiers of past centuries if not out of the desire to emulate their bravery and self-sacrifice? The very aspiration to practice certain virtues turns people into unwitting admirers of those who have succeeded where they still have desire alone. When
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Be It According to Thy Word
Again, the Annunciation is “the beginning of our salvation and the revelation of the mystery which is from eternity: the Son of God becometh the Son of the Virgin, and Gabriel proclaimeth good tidings of grace” (Troparion of the Feast of the Annunciation). The divine will has been declared and proclaimed by the archangel. But
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Homily on the Annunciation. The Power of the Cross of God’s Love
“Today is the crown of our salvation and the manifestation of the mystery that is from all eternity.” Today the Holy Spirit descended upon mankind in the person of the Most Pure One, and the Power of the Most High, the Word of God, overshadowed her and took up His abode in her. The ladder
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Homily on the Annunciation of the Mother of God
And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest. Lk. 1:31–32 When Tsar Solomon received from God the light of wisdom to study the mysteries of nature, after he had looked over
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The Annunciation
The feast of the Annunciation is one of the twelve great feasts of the Church. It commemorates and celebrates the event described in the Gospel according to St. Luke (1:26-38): And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a
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