Annunciation

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Annunciation, Christmas, Cross, Entrance into the Temple, Holy Spirit, prayer, Sacrifice, St. Ambrose, Theotokos, Trinity

I hope you don’t mind, but I am going to continue to meditate upon what I wrote about yesterday. Namely, this image of the Theotokos in Orthodox Christian hymnody (this particular verse being sung at the Vespers of the Nativity):

The Virgin is now more spacious than the Heavens; for light has shone upon those in darkness, and has exalted those of low degree who sing like the Angels: Glory to God in the highest.

The Evangelist tells us in Luke 1:31 that the Archangel Gabriel informed our Holy Lady the Theotokos that

You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus

because (Luke 1:35)

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you.

That is to say, the Holy Spirit descends upon Mary and Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God, enters her body. This very same salvific action happens during the Divine Liturgy to Orthodox Christians. The Holy Spirit descends upon us and the gifts set forth and changes the bread and the wine into the very Body and Blood of Christ.

In other words, when we take communion we experience what Mary underwent at the Annunciation. For, as St. Ambrose states in the twelfth chapter of his treatise One the Holy Spirit:

There is communion between the Father and the Son is plain, for it is written: ‘And our communion is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 1:3). And in another place: ‘The communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all’ (2 Cor. 8:14). If, then, the peace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one, the grace one, the love one, and the communion one, the working is certainly one, and where the working is one, certainly the power cannot be divided nor the substance separated. For, if so, how could the grace of the same working agree?

Here, again, we find the marvel of the Incarnation: in the moment we take communion, not only do we experience what the Theotokos underwent at the Annunciation, but we, too, are made more spacious than the Heavens. In that moment we can ask of ourselves: How is that the uncontainable is contained within me?

There is one caveat, here, however. During the Canon of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, celebrated on November 21, we sing repeatedly:

You, O pure and virgin Maiden, are truly superior to all.

We say this because Mary experienced the descent of the Holy Spirit and the Incarnate God within her through faith. In order that the rest of us experience this truly awesome mystery, Christ had to go to the Cross. So, too, must we all pick up our Cross in order to follow Him and experience that which the Theotokos underwent at the Annunciation and become more spacious than the Heavens. Amen.

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Father, Son and Holy Spirit

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Annunciation, Christmas, Holy Spirit, Old Testament, Psalms, St. Gregory Palamas, Theophany

3. “God, thy God”, it says, “hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (Ps. 45:7). The same one is both perfect God and perfect man; the same God is both the one who anoints and is anointed. For it says, “God, thy God hath anointed thee”, It is as man that the Word from God the Father is anointed, and He is anointed with the co-eternal Spirit who is of one nature with Him. This is the oil of gladness, which is why; again, it is the same God who is both the divine unction and the one anointed. But although He is anointed as man, as God He has the source of anointing within Himself. That is why he who beheld things in a divine manner saw and foretold that all those anointed by God were partakers of His life. For it is the property of God alone not to partake of the lives of others but to be partaken of, and to have as partakers those who rejoice in the Spirit. Such is the infant born now in the lowly stable, and hymned by us as a babe in the manger. — St. Gregory Palamas, Homily Fifty-Eight on the Saving Nativity According to the Flesh of Our Lord and God and Savior

Yesterday, I mentioned that in re-reading Psalm 45, I saw a glimpse of the Trinity in verse 7. Again, this is why I love reading the Fathers — their relationship with Scripture really puts modern man to shame. Whereas I only saw the obvious — the Father and the Son — St. Gregory sees the Holy Spirit as well.

Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. — Psalm 45:7

To review, the first God is the King — the Son. The God of the King is the Father. The King — the Son — is anointed by God the Father with the Holy Spirit. In other words, the image Palamas is invoking from this verse will come to fruition a week after Christmas at Theophany:

At that time, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.” — Mark 1:9-11

Once again we see the way that the Church understands and uses Scripture. It is not a bunch of books to be separated into category by context, author and redactor; rather, it is one book written by many over time inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is thus perfectly acceptable to see and understand Psalm 45 in terms of Christmas and Theophany as well as the Annunciation.