The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
Brothers and sisters:
Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
1 Corinthians 1: 22 – 25
We are regarded as deceivers and yet true; as unknown yet well-known; as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet making many rich; as having nothing yet possessing all things.
2 Corinthians 6: 8 – 10
EPISODE 11 REFLECTIONS SET 1
An Angel appears and announces a Paradox: The Incarnation is at hand. A virgin will conceive and give birth. Her child will be God With Us. The Creator becomes the Created.
Wings beating about the room… What is this fallen star?
-W.B. Yeats-
EPISODE 11 REFLECTIONS SET 2
Paradox stuns the rational mind and reveals truth to the heart.
The very contradictions in my life are signs of God’s mercy to me.
-Thomas Merton-
The paradox of the Incarnation challenges us to find God in the weak, the poor, the ignorant and the powerless. The Incarnation reveals that love necessarily entails solidarity.
EPISODE 11 REFLECTIONS SET 3
Even more surprising than Jesus’ preferential option for the poor is God’s preferential option for the sinner.
By choosing to walk with sinners before they ask for forgiveness, Jesus entirely rejects the notion of earning or meriting God’s love.
EPISODE 11 REFLECTIONS SET 4
What Gabriel proclaims during the Annunciation is the end of the old thrall and the beginning of the Age of Paradox.
EPISODE 11 REFLECTIONS SET 5
TOM: That– out there– what happened to us when Rebecca woke up? That wasn’t grief. That was something primordial, brutal, daemonic. It was something out of Euripides or Jeremiah. Pre-rational. Amygdalic.
An angel precedes the first paradox.
But suffering and lamentation precede the ultimate paradox: the Resurrection.
Life conquers Death.
