Annunciation, Mary and the Catholic Church

The Catholic doctrine of the Hypostatic Union historically started in Nazareth when Mary, during the Annunciation, said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to your word,” and the most amazing Grace was made visible in the human Body of Christ in the Incarnation!

John Lennon, a prominent member of the Beatles band, predicted in 1965 that Christianity would disappear. It will vanish and shrink… We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity” (London-based Evening Standard, March 1966).

However, he is no longer present.  Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, and Jerry Lee Lewis are all gone. When rock and roll is no longer a fad, Christianity, the world’s largest religious group, is still kicking and alive.

Amid today’s religious confusion and so much unbelief, it might be beneficial to go back to the origin of Christianity (which Lennon so predicted to “vanish and shrink”) and its central mystery.

The central mystery lies in the Incarnation of the only Son of God, otherwise known as the Annunciation [of the Good News to Mary]. Here, I underscore the root carne (from Latin caro, carnis) in the word INCARNATION, which means “flesh, human flesh.”

We are used to celebrating the birth of the historical Jesus, the First Christmas, as the greatest story ever told, but the Incarnation goes back nine months before the First Christmas.

In the Annunciation, "the Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary (a teenager then), and the Holy Spirit conceived her." Being prayed at noon in every one of the more than 70 SM malls across the Philippines, the Angelus reminds us of the fact that God’s eternal Word (Verbum Dei), Creator and Redeemer, through whom all things were made, was Himself made “flesh,” becoming a true son of Eve and a legit member of the Homo sapiens.

The central mystery is revealed in the Gospel of John:

“In the beginning was the Word. 

And the Word was with God (Jesus was with God the Creator).

And the Word was God...

AND THE WORD BECAME FLESH (Verbum caro factum est)

And He lived among us” (John 1:1-2, 14).

The Incarnation and Mary

Let us review the theology of proto-evangelium. Given the sad event of the loss of the first Garden, YHWH God thought of a new Garden, with a New Eve and a New Adam, a new order, a fresh beginning for the humanity He loves so much. That dream was realized, historically and concretely, in the joyful event of the Incarnation.

The principal reason for the coming of Jesus in the Incarnation is the fulfillment of the proto-evangelium, the good news that tells us that the offspring of the woman would one day crush the head of the serpent.

Mary is the New Eve, and the early fathers and doctors of the Church identified the woman announced in the proto-evangelium as Mary, the new mother of humankind. 

Mary was the first among the redeemed. Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ's victory over sin when "she was preserved from the stain of original sin and, by a special grace of God, did not sin of any kind during her whole earthly life" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, or CCC 410-411).

And the Word was made Flesh! (John 1:14).  The Redemptorist Founder and Saint Alphonsus De Liguori, CSsR (1696–1787), once wrote the most profound but concrete description of the Incarnation—Caro Jesu caro Mariae est.

It means “the flesh of Jesus is the flesh of Mary” one hundred percent because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin who “knew no man.”

From Annunciation March 25 to Christmas December 25—nine full months in the womb of Mary—the historical Jesus, the LAMB OF GOD, is getting ready to be sacrificed for the salvation of humankind. Hence, in the Annunciation, Mary became the Theotokos (Mother of God), Kyriotokos (Mother of the Lamb), and Soteriotokos (Bearer of the Savior).

In his passion and death, every square inch of Jesus was scourged, nailed, spat upon, tortured, and crowned with thorns; every square inch was knitted in Mary’s womb. God so loved the world that He sent His only son (John 3:16) through Mary. Mary, Kyriotokos, gave us the Sacerdos et Victima, the Lamb of God to be slaughtered using a human body, shedding human blood to “wash away our sins.” 

The Annunciation and the Holy Catholic Church

The world cannot be saved from the outside. Outsiders cannot solve the chaos we create. Human history became salvation history when God said it was time (Greek kairos) for my Son to be “born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4).

Abraham, Moses, David, the kings, and the prophets of the Old Testament prepared for His coming. Mary in the New Testament said, “Be it done to me according to Your word.” When in Nazareth, Mary said yes to Gabriel, God’s messenger; the world became the dynamic theater of the human story where God’s saving plan was crystallized.

God's plan included the conception of the Savior as a Jew. He was neither an invading alien nor someone different from Adam. In today’s parlance, he was conceived and born a Jew, one among us.

The Catholic Church too was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Just as Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary in Nazareth, the Catholic Church was created by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost in Jerusalem. 

Unbelievably, the Catholic Church represents Christ's visible and historical presence among us after His birth, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension into Heaven, with Pope Francis serving as His Vicar on earth—formed, guided, and protected by the Holy Spirit. Our synodal and missionary community, koinonia, is the extension of that “Divinity Made Human.”

The Catholic Church is one and holy not because we are perfect but because our Founder, the historical Jesus, is divine and holy.

Happy Solemnity of the Annunciation!