The Solemnity of the Annunciation (2026)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

On today’s feast, the Church celebrates the mystery of the Incarnation and at the same time the vocation of Our Lady. It was her faithful response to the angel’s message, her fiat, let it be done unto me, that began the whole work of redemption.

In the oldest Christian calendars, this solemnity is referred to as a feast of Our Lord, but the text makes special reference to Our Lady. For many centuries it has been considered a Marian feast. The Church has traditionally held that there is a close connection between Eve, the mother of mankind, and Mary, the new Eve, mother of redeemed humanity.

The setting of this feast day on March 25th corresponds to Christmas. In addition, there’s an ancient tradition that the creation of the world, and the commencement and conclusion of the redemption, all happened to coincide at the vernal equinox.

There was a teacher in a kindergarten school who was preparing some young girls for First Holy Communion. She talked to them on March 25th that on this day the Holy Spirit came down unto Our Lady, and Jesus began to grow and grow and grow. And nine months later, on December 25th, he was born. A few weeks later, the teacher asked one little girl, “So what’s going to happen on your First Communion day?” And she said, “I’m going to receive Jesus beside me.” And the teacher was a bit surprised, “Beside you? And why not within you?” And the little girl said, “Well, I don’t want him to grow and grow and grow.” The teacher had to explain that that only happened with Our Lady, but thus Jesus grows sacramentally and spiritually.

We’re told by St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians that “when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). As the greatest proof of his love for us, God had his only Son become man to save us from our sins. In this way, Jesus merited for us the dignity of becoming children of God. His arrival signaled the fullness of time.

St. Paul puts it quite literally that Jesus was born of a woman. Jesus did not come to earth as a spirit. He truly became man like one of us. He received his human nature from Our Lady’s immaculate womb. Today’s feast day, therefore, is really an honor of Jesus and Mary.

One writer pointed out it is reasonable to consider, first and foremost, the purity and sanctity of the woman whom God chose from all eternity to give from his eternity to his humanity. When God decided to create the first man, he first took care to create a fitting environment for him, which was the Garden of Eden. It makes sense, we’re told then, that when God made ready to send his Son, the Christ, he likewise prepared for him a worthy environment, namely the body and soul of the Blessed Virgin.

As we consider the significance of this solemnity, we find Jesus very closely united to Mary. When the Blessed Virgin said yes, freely, to the plans revealed to her by the Creator, the Divine Word assumed a human nature; a rational soul and a body which was formed in the most pure womb of Mary. The divine nature and the human were united in a single Person.

St. Josemar’a says Jesus Christ, True God and thenceforth True Man, the Only-begotten and Eternal Son of the Father, from that moment on as Man, the true son of Mary. This was why Our Lady is the Mother of the Incarnate Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who has united our human nature to himself forever, without any confusion of these two natures.

The greatest praise we can give to the Blessed Virgin is to address her loud and clear by the name that expresses her highest dignity: Mother of God. How many times have we repeated those sweet words? Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. How many times we must have meditated upon this, the first joyful mystery of the Holy Rosary.

St. John tells us “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Down through the ages, the saints and theologians have endeavored to read God’s mind with regard to the Incarnation. St. Thomas Aquinas has observed God could have restored human nature in any number of ways. It wasn’t necessary for him to become man, not even for the sake of the redemption.

The Incarnation is the ultimate expression of God’s love for mankind. The best reason for the Incarnation seems to lie in the awesome immensity of this divine love. As St. John tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).

By this lowering of himself, God has made it easier for man to speak with him. The whole history of salvation represents God’s reaching out to his beloved creatures. The Catholic faith reveals to humanity all the goodness, mercy, and love that God has for us. Right from the beginning of time, God has been encouraging man to draw close to him. The Incarnation is the culmination of this message.

Today’s feast celebrates the moment in history when Emmanuel, God-with-us, acquired his human realization. From this moment on, the only begotten Son would be a man like us, and he would remain a human person forever. The Incarnation was not a temporary condition. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, will be perfect God and perfect man through all eternity. This is the great mystery that we may well find overwhelming. God, in his infinite love, has taken man seriously.

Pope St. John Paul says, due to his infinite love, God has given man the opportunity to respond to Christ, a full-fledged member of the human race. Remembering that the Word became flesh, that is, that the Son of God became man, we must become conscious of how great each man has become through this mystery, through the Incarnation of the Son of God, Christ.

In fact, Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary and became man to reveal the eternal love of the Creator and Father and to make known the dignity of each one of us. As a result of many religious controversies over the centuries, the Church has sought to define the truths relating to the Incarnation. She has been zealous in this regard because she realizes that to defend the truth about Christ is to defend the truth about the human person. He who is the image of the invisible God is himself a perfect man. To the sons of Adam he restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onwards. Since human nature that he has assumed was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too.

For by his Incarnation, says the Second Vatican Council, the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by a human will, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, “he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things but sin” (cf. Heb. 4:15).

The liturgy says: “Father, how wonderfully you care for us. How boundless your merciful love. To ransom a slave, you gave away your Son. O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer.”

It is appropriate for us to give thanks for this wonderful gift on today’s feast. John Paul II said we give thanks to God through his Mother because Mary, as God’s collaborator in giving a human nature to his eternal Son, was the instrument that linked Jesus with the whole of humanity.

The Incarnation should have a pronounced and dramatic impact on our life. This event is the central moment in human history. Without Christ, life has no meaning. Christ the Redeemer fully reveals man to himself. It is only through Christ that we will come to comprehend our inner self and everything that matters most to us: the hidden value of pain and of work well done, the authentic peace and joy that surpasses natural feelings and life’s uncertainties, the delightful prospect of our supernatural reward in our eternal homeland.

Unceasingly contemplating the whole of Christ’s mysteries, says John Paul, the Church knows with all the certainty of faith that the redemption took place through the Cross and has definitively restored his dignity to man and given back meaning to this life in the world, a meaning which was lost to a considerable extent because of sin.

The human testimony of the Son of God teaches us that all earthly realities ought to be loved and offered up to heaven. Christ has transformed the human condition into a pathway to God. Consequently, the Christian struggle for perfection takes on a profoundly positive character. This struggle has nothing to do with snuffing out one’s humanity so that the divine might shine out instead. Sanctity does not necessitate total separation from worldly affairs. For it is not human nature that opposes God’s will, but sin and the effects of original sin which have so severely damaged our soul.

Our struggle to become like Christ brings with it a lifelong battle against whatsoever degrades our humanity: egoism, envy, sensuality, a critical spirit. The authentic struggle for sanctity involves every aspect of the proper development of human personality: professional work, human virtues, social virtues, love for everything that is human.

In the same way as the humanity of Christ is not effaced by his divinity, so it is that through the Incarnation, the human condition preserves its integrity and finds its final end. We’re told in St. John, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself” (John 12:32). Through his Incarnation, through his work at Nazareth, and his preaching and miracles in Judea and Galilee, through his death on the Cross and through his Resurrection, Christ is the center of the universe, the firstborn and Lord of all creation. Our task as Christians is to proclaim the kingship of Christ, announcing it through what we say and do.

When Christ is passing by, St. Josemar’a says, Our Lord wants men and women of his own in all walks of life. Some he calls away from society, asking them to give up involvement in the world so that they remind the rest of us by their example that God exists. To others he entrusts the priestly ministry. But he wants the vast majority to stay right where they are, in all earthly occupations in which they work: the factory, the laboratory, the farm, the trades, the streets of the big cities, and the trails of the mountains.

God chose his Mother and bestowed upon her all manner of gifts and graces. St. Paul said to the Galatians that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Gal. 4:4). We saw Christ as a little baby, as a defenseless child in the arms of his mother. She shows the child to us so that we might adore him as our Redeemer and Lord.

God the Father had taken into account all the circumstances surrounding his birth: the decree of Caesar Augustus, the census, the poverty in Bethlehem. But above all, he had foreseen the mother who would bring him into the world. This woman was spoken of on various occasions in Holy Scripture. She had been predestined from all eternity. God had prepared her creation with more loving attention than he had given to the making of any other creature. This was so because she was to make a free choice to be his mother.

In Genesis, God announced that he would put enmity between the serpent and the woman (cf. Gen. 3:15). And the Lord said to the prophet Ahaz in the book of Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Our Lady was prefigured in the Ark of the Covenant, in the house of gold, in the tower of ivory.

God chose her from among all women before the dawn of time. He loved her more than he loved the sum of all of his creation. He loved her with such love that he bestowed upon her the plenitude of his gifts and graces, more than he granted to his angels and his saints. He preserved her from any stain of sin or imperfection.

As a result, said Pope Pius IX, no creature more beautiful or holy could ever have been conceived. It is with reason that theologians and saints have taught that God could have created a better world, but he could not have created a more perfect mother than his own mother.

St. Bernard comments: Why should we be astonished if the God who could work marvels in the scripture and through his saints should choose to reveal himself even more marvelous by means of his mother?

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the divine maternity of Mary surpasses all graces and charisms, such as the gift of prophecy, the gift of tongues, the power to work miracles. Almighty God, omnipotent and infinitely wise, had to choose his mother. What would we have done if we had to choose ours? Well probably, we would have chosen the mother that we have, filling her with all the graces. That’s what God did. That’s why after the Blessed Trinity comes Mary.

In The Forge, St. Josemar’a says: “Theologians have given a rational explanation for her fullness of grace and why she cannot be subject to the devil. It was fitting that it should be so. God could do it, therefore he did it. That is the great proof, the clearest proof that God endowed his mother with every privilege from the very first moment. That is how she is: beautiful and pure and spotless in soul and body.”

Today as we look upon Our Lady, the Mother of God, on the Feast of the Annunciation, we see her with child. We have to give thanks, said one writer, to God, because surely this was one of God’s gracious mercies. Apart from creating us and redeeming us, namely, to choose to have a mother who became our mother also.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that Mary is the one person next to God the Father who could say to the Divine Son: “You are my Son.” According to St. Bernard, Our Lady calls God Almighty, the Lord of the Angels, her Son, when she asks him in all simplicity: “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Luke 2:48). What angel would dare to say such a thing? But Our Lady, fully aware of her motherhood, does not hesitate to call the Lord of Heaven and Earth her Son. And God, says St. Bernard, is not offended, for being called what he wanted to be. He is truly the Son of Mary.

Whenever we study the nature of Christ, we are careful to distinguish between his eternal generation’his divine nature, the pre-existence of the Word’and his temporal birth. Being God, the Son is begotten, not made, by the Father from all eternity. Being man, the Son was born; he became man of the Virgin Mary.

In the fullness of time, the Anointed One of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, assumed a human nature. That is to say, he assumed a rational soul and human body formed in the womb of his immaculate mother. The human nature, soul and body, and the divine nature came together in the one person of the Word.

From the very moment when Our Lady gave her free consent to the will of God, she became the mother of the Word Incarnate. It’s similar to the case of each and every mother, in whose womb a human body is born but not the rational soul. We can think of Mary as the Mother of God because of the unity of persons in her Son.

From their place in heaven, the angels and the saints contemplate in awe the supreme glory of Mary. One writer says they know full well that this dignity derives from the fact that she was and continues to be for all eternity the Mother of God, Mater Creatoris, Mater Salvatoris. It is for this reason that in the Litany of the Rosary, the first title of glory given to Our Lady is Sancta Dei Genetrix, Mother of God. The titles that follow are those which correspond to her divine maternity: Holy Virgin of Virgins, Mother of Divine Grace, Mother Most Pure, Mother Most Chaste.

By nature of her being Mother of the Son of God made man, Mary has a unique relationship to the Blessed Trinity. She is the daughter of God the Father, as she has been called by the Fathers of the Church, and in the constant teaching of the Magisterium. Through her Son, the Blessed Virgin has a bond of consanguinity which thereby confers upon her earthly power and dominion over Jesus. One writer says Jesus himself is bound to Mary by the same duties of justice which all children have to their parents. With regard to the Holy Spirit, Mary is his temple and tabernacle, according to the teachings of the Fathers, and most recently of Pope John Paul II.

Mary is the great masterpiece of the Trinity. This masterpiece ought not to be something accidental in the life of a Christian. God does not bestow upon a person so many gifts just to impress us. This masterpiece of the Trinity is the Mother of the Redeemer, but at the same time my mother. Mother of such a wretched thing as myself who am in this respect no different from any other person.

We can finish our prayer by turning to the Mother of Jesus who is also our mother, and using the prayer of St. Catherine of Siena who says: “Today, by your conception, you have brought our Savior to the world. O Mary, blessed be you among all women forever. Today the Godhead has become one with our humanity in such a permanent bond that nothing can break it. Not our ingratitude, not even death itself. Blessed be you.”

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW