Malcolm Guite writes that ‘the Annunciation, the visit of Gabriel to the blessed virgin Mary, is that mysterious moment of awareness, assent and transformation in which eternity touches time.’ As we reflect on this mystery, through meditations and poems I have written, let us think ‘about vision, what we allow ourselves to be aware of, and also about freedom, the way all things turn on our discernment and freedom.’
Angelic announcement of peace and goodwill
come in the form of the child found
by night workers, swaddled and lying in a manger.
His mother ponders these things -
annunciation, nativity, incarnation - in her heart.
Bethlehem begins.
Here, human hands hold God for the first time.
Here, God is fed from a human breast for the first time.
Here, God is struck on the back,
takes his first breath, utters his first cry.
Here, heaven and earth are rejoined.
Here, humanity is taken into the Godhead.
Here, God becomes vulnerable.
Here, God experiences created life.
Here, God enters his creation.
Here, God moves into our neighbourhood,
Becomes one with human beings.
In a place of forced migration,
Where no room could be found
For a pregnant woman
whose baby was not the child of her betrothed,
In less than ideal circumstances
Here begins peace on earth
Goodwill to all.
Salvation is birthed and named
The King of the Jews is sought and found,
The Messiah is recognised and praised.
Here the dividing wall
Between Jew and Gentile,
Male and female, slave and free,
Begins to be removed.
Here begins salvation, redemption,
Restoration for one and all.
Reconciliation between
the human and divine.
You have come to us wordless Word, flesh of our flesh,
as a small child, with no words but a hungry cry,
the Word that made humanity
crying for a mother’s breast;
gravity making creativity become a child
that can be dropped and left unfed.
This is the greatest of all gifts,
the gift of eternal vulnerable love;
the infinite clings with tiny arms to a mother's neck.
Caress us now with your tiny hands,
embrace us with your tiny arms
and pierce our hearts with your soft, sweet cries.
Let us run to Mary, and, as little children,
cast ourselves into her arms with a perfect confidence.
Let us watch the baby Jesus sweetly sucking
the sweet breasts of his glorious Mother,
laying his hand upon his Mother's bosom,
looking up and smiling at her all joyous and full of rapture,
as she holds him, her Lord,
at once so great and so little, in her arms;
kissing over and over again her little infant.
Blessed is that mouth, blessed are her kisses.
Let us calm and quiet ourselves,
like weaned children with their mother;
like a weaned child, to be content in the God
who desires to gather her children
as, under her wings, a hen gathers her brood.
Guite writes of Mary as: ‘a woman who, like so many others then as now, bore the appalling consequences of decisions made by men of power. She fled with her child as a refugee, she saw her son wrongfully arrested, beaten, and mocked by the occupying military force and then tortured to death on a public cross, in what was intended by the Romans to be shameful humiliation, but has, in fact, become the revelation of the full extent of God’s Love.
So, I find myself drawn again to the compassionate figure of Mary, not just in empathy with her own sufferings, direct and vicarious, but also because I believe that her compassion, the compassion so perfectly sculpted in Michelangelo’s Pietà, continues in and from heaven: that the compassion of Mary the Mother of God is still a force for good in the world.
As I think of the soldiers who call for her protection or cry out for her pity, on both sides of the war in Ukraine, I, too, yearn towards her, and with her, towards heaven, from this, our exile. I think of her, watching her Son’s torment, still steadfast in agonised love, and I sense her solidarity with all the mothers who are currently compelled to feel such pain.’ As he thinks of her in these ways he sees her ‘ holding up, once more, all the grief-stricken, to be folded in the mantle of her prayer.’
Jesus meets his mother
Mother,
you bore me
so that I
can bear the world
on my shoulders.
Mother,
you birthed me
so that I
can give birth
to God’s children.
Mother,
you sheltered me
so that others
can find shelter
under my wing.
Mother,
you carried me
so that I
can carry others
into heaven’s kingdom
on earth.
Mother,
you bore me,
birthed me,
sheltered me,
carried me,
to release me
and give me
in broken pieces
to the world.
Mother,
in a little while
you will not see me
and your heart
will break.
Mother,
in a little while
you will see me
and the shattered
shards of your heart
will be gathered up
and restored.
Jesus is taken down from the cross
And a sword pierced her heart,
as the whip flayed his back,
as the cross made him fall,
as the nails pierced his wrists and feet,
as the spear pierced his side,
as she held the limp, lifeless adult body
she had once held, as a newborn babe, to her breast.
Guite concludes:
Jesus meets his mother
This darker path into the heart of pain
Was also hers whose love enfolded him
In flesh and wove him in her womb. Again
The sword is piercing. She, who cradled him
And gentled and protected her young son,
Must stand and watch the cruelty that mars
Her maiden making. Waves of pain that stun
And sicken pass across his face and hers
As their eyes meet. Now she enfolds the world
He loves in prayer; the mothers of the disappeared
Who know her pain, all bodies bowed and curled
In desperation on this road of tears,
All the grief-stricken in their last despair,
Are folded in the mantle of her prayer.
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Malcolm Guite - Annunciation.
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