Fr Bonaventure Hinwood OFM, Pretoria
Our liturgical calendar, following the gospels, emphasises Easter and Jesus’ death and resurrection. In the gospels and writings of the New Testament this is obviously because of its apologetic value. It is a good argument for persuading people to believe in Jesus and follow him.
As St John writes at the end of his gospel: “These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life through his name” (20:31).
The gospels are not biographies, giving Jesus’ life history. Nor do they give well-ordered outlines of what has to be believed about Jesus, as a catechism would. The fact that they and St Paul give Jesus’ death and resurrection such prominence is in order to attract people to him.
Death is a problem for most people, and the fact that in Jesus it is overcome has a strong appeal.
Jesus’ conception and birth are much less spectacular, and less useful for this missionary purpose. This does not make them less important from the point of view of Christian truth.
In my opinion, by far the most important liturgical celebration of the year is the Annunciation on March 25. Without the incarnation the rest would not have happened.
In the early Church this was the celebration of celebrations, because of the opinion that Jesus’ conception and death occurred on the same date. It was only little by little that this compact whole was unravelled to give us Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost, and the Christmas-related celebrations. The March 25 celebration was left with the important reality of the incarnation, but tended to get pushed into the background.
St Francis of Assisi held that Christmas was the greatest of all feasts in the liturgical calendar. He had a point, because what was a completely hidden event of the incarnation became a visible reality nine months later in the birth of Jesus as a baby. So Christmas is an extension of the Annunciation.
Showing visibly who Jesus is, is emphasised particularly on the feast of the Epiphany, but it does not end there as the liturgical texts for that day show. It carries on until Jesus’ baptism and the Father’s acknowledgement of him as his Son.
This is why the two gospels which deal with Jesus’ conception and birth both carry on their introduction into chapter 3 which deals in both cases with Jesus’ baptism.
Likewise, the introduction to John’s gospel, which says about the incarnation that “The Word became flesh, he lived among us”(1:14), ends with Jesus’ baptism, and John the Baptist’s witness to the Holy Spirit coming down upon him (1:34).
John’s first letter opens with a clear witness to the incarnation as its foundation: “Something which has existed since the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have watched and touched with our own hands, the Word of life — that is our theme. That life was made visible” (1:1-2).
The importance of this is stressed in the Letter to the Hebrews when it tells us that “it was not the angels the Son took to himself, he took to himself the line of Abraham. It was essential that he should in this way be made completely like his brothers so that he could become a compassionate and trustworthy high priest for their relationship to God, able to expiate the sins of the people” (2:16-17).
Similarly, St Paul shows our status as children of our heavenly Father depends on the incarnation: “God sent his Son born of a woman…so that we receive adoption as sons. As you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son crying, ‘Abba, Father’ ” (Gal 4:4-6).
Contemporary culture, which gives far more prominence to Christmas than to Easter, for
commercial reasons, may be God’s way of inviting us to review our liturgical calendar, and upgrade Christmas and the Christmas season, and the Annunciation along with it.
The solemnity of the Annunciation could be more dignifyingly celebrated in line with its title, and celebrated before Palm Sunday if it happens to fall in Holy Week. The Christmas season could be given six weeks up to and including Jesus’ presentation in the temple.
Without the Annunciation and Christmas, there would be no Good Friday or Easter.
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