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Thus know, that our Redeemer is not simply a mere man, since all the human race was enslaved to sin. But He likewise is not God only, non-partaking of human nature. He had body, since if He had not clothed Himself in me, He then likewise should not have saved me.

To save people would be impossible for a mere man, since every man has need in the Saviour: "for all, -- says Saint Paul, -- have sinned, and come short the Glory of God" (Rom 3:23). Since sin subjects the sinner to the power of the devil, and the devil subjects him to death, then our condition did become extremely hapless: there was no sort of way to be delivered from death.

We can be persuaded in this by the very name of the Archangel, making annunciation to Mary: his name -- is Gabriel. What does this name mean? -- it means: "God and man." Since That One about Whom he announced is God and Man, then his very name points beforehand to this miracle, so that with faith be accepted the deed of the Divine dispensation.

http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Feasts-and-Saints/Sermons/On-the-Annunciation.html

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MARCH 25 - FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION



Edited by - PotOnWheel on 03/24/2003 08:18:05 AM

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Throughout, the texts reflect the dogmatic definitions of the first four ecumenical councils regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ and his relation to the Father: it is 'the divine Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, who enters Mary's womb and there takes our human nature upon himself. They reflect too the emphasis on the purity of Mary, understood in terms of virginity, which we have seen first attested in the Protevangelium of James in the second century. The belief that Mary's virginity was preserved not only before, but also after, the birth of Jesus became an integral part of the Church's tradition concerning Mary from the fourth century onwards.

The icon of the feast is based chiefly on Luke's narrative. But sometimes it includes details taken from- the Protevangelium of James, which elaborates Luke's story. Mary is said to have been drawing out purple thread for a veil for the temple when Gabriel came to her; and this detail is occasionally included in the scene. The icon depicts Gabriel coming to Mary to tell her of the child she will conceive. By contrast with Western pictures of the Annunciation, where Mary is often shown kneeling in prayer, in the icon she is depicted sometimes seated, at others standing. The Holy Spirit is often shown coming towards her in the form of a dove, within a ray of light from heaven.

(Hugh Wybrew)

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Forefeast of the Annunciation of the Mother of God (24 March)

From Vespers

The hidden mystery,
unknown to angels,
is-entrusted to the archangel Gabriel.
Now he will come to you,
fair undefiled turtledove,
humankind's revival;
he will cry out,
holy Lady, to you:
Greetings! prepare to receive
by my word in your womb
God the Word.

A palace filled with light,
the divine maiden's undefiled womb
is prepared for you. Lord:
In it come down and dwell,
having mercy on your creation;
under attack through envy,
in bondage to the Evil One,
its primal beauty lost,
it waits for you ,
to descend and save it.

The archangel Gabriel,
in visible form,
will come to you, Pure One,
and cry out to you:
Hail, curse's redemption,
you raise up the fallen!
Hail; you alone chosen,
who gave answer to God!
Hail, Sun's living cloud!
Receive him who though bodiless
yet wills to dwell in your womb.

Today the beginning
of the whole world's joy
prompts us to praise
its forefeast.
For see, Gabriel comes,
bringing good news
to the Virgin,
and cries out to her:
Greetings, favored one,
the Lord is with you!


From Matins

Today all creation rejoices,
for the angel cries: Greetings!
Blessed are you, Pure One,
Christ's spotless Mother.
Today is the serpent's
haughtiness bridled,
for the bonds
of our ancestor's curse are undone.
We too then cry out to you:
Greetings, most favored one!

Without ceasing to sit
on the Father's right,
he who is beyond all being
will make his dwelling,
pure Lady, in you;
so that he might set you,
who are close to him and good,
on his right like a Queen, '
and stretch out his right hand
to all the fallen, and save us.

As gifts before the festival
we bring you, purest Lady,
the wealth of our poverty:
purity and self-control,
praise, prayers and tears,
fasting and meekness.
For their sake, Lady,
help and protect us all,
Mother of God, in your mercy.

Gods Birthgiver heard
speech she knew not.
For the archangel announced
to her the good news.
Accepting in faith the greeting,
she conceived you,
who are God from all eternity.
So we too rejoice
and cry out to you:
0 God, become flesh through her,
without change,
grant peace to the world
and great mercy to us.

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Annunciation of the Mother of God (25 March)

From Vespers

The Creator, pitying his creation
and Stooping in his compassion, '
makes haste to dwell in a Maiden's womb,
the womb of God's own child.
The great archangel came to her
and said: Greetings,
whom God has favored!
Our God is how with you.
Have no fear of me,
the king's great commander.
For you have found the grace
which your ancestress Eve
lost of old.
You will conceive
and give birth to him
who is of one being
with the Father.

From heaven was sent
the archangel Gabriel,
to announce to the Virgin
her conceiving.
He came to Nazareth
and, considering the wonder
in his mind, was amazed: '
How can he be born of a Virgin
who, beyond understanding, dwells on high?
How can he, whose throne is heaven
and whose footstool earth,
be embraced in a woman's womb?
He on whom the six-winged seraphs
and cherubim with many eyes
cannot intently look,
has consented at a single word
to become flesh through her.
He who is present is the Word of God.
So why do I stand still
and not say to the maiden:

Greetings, favored one!
the Lord is with you.
Greetings, pure Virgin!
Greetings, unmarried Bride!
Greetings, Life's mother!
Blessed is the fruit of your womb!

Today is our salvation's beginning,
the eternal mystery's revealing.
God's Son
becomes the Virgins;
Gabriel
brings good news of grace.'
Join we then him
and sing to God's Mother:
Greetings, favored one!
The Lord is with you.


From Great Compline

In the sixth month
the archangel Gabriel
was sent from heaven
to a town in Galilee,
called Nazareth,
to bring to the Virgin
the joyful good news.
He came to her and said:
Greetings, favored one!
The Lord is with you.
Greetings, vessel holding
the nature nothing can contain
For your womb, blessed one,
has embraced him
whom the heavens could not contain.
Greetings, honored Lady!
You are Adam's renewal
and Eve's liberation,
the whole world's rejoicing,
our race's great joy.

Heavens, be merry
and earth, rejoice!
for he who with the Father
is coeternal,
without beginning,
and shares his throne,
has displayed his compassion
and loving mercy for humankind.

In accordance with the Father's
loving will and wise counsel,
he has stooped to empty himself,
and taken up his abode
in a virgin womb,
purified for him by the Spirit.
0 what marvel! God is with us;
a womb embraces the infinite;
the timeless is within time.
Marvelous is his conception,
without seed!
Beyond telling his self-emptying!
How great the mystery!
For God empties himself,
becomes incarnate,
becomes a creature,
and to a Virgin
the angel announces
her conceiving:
Greetings, favored one!

The Lord is with you,
in his abundant mercy.

Today is joy's good news,
the Virgin's festival.
Earth's joined with heaven,
Adam's made anew,
from earliest sadness
is Eve set free.
For our nature's tent,
made Godlike by him
who took upon himself
our human clay,
is made God's own temple.

0 mystery!
How he empties himself
cannot be known;
how he is conceived
cannot be told.
The angel officiates at the marvel;
the Virgin's womb accepts the Son;
the Holy Spirit is sent from above;
the Father consents from heaven,
common purpose brings about the covenant.
In him and by him we are saved:
cry we out then with Gabriel to the Virgin:
Greetings, favored one!
The Lord is with you.
From her our salvation,
Christ our God,
has taken our human nature,
exalting it to himself.
Pray to him to save us.


From Matins

Gabriel from heaven
called to the holy one:
Greetings! for you will conceive
in your womb the God
who is before all ages,
who by his word
established earth's bounds.
To which Mary replied:
Husbandless am I:
how shall I bear a son?
Who has seen
seedless birth?
The angel explained
to the Virgin, God's Mother:
The Holy Spirit
will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High
will overshadow you.

God's Word to earth
has now come down.
Standing before the Virgin
the angel cried:
Greetings, blessed one!
You alone have kept
virginity's seal,
when you received in your womb
the Word and Lord
who is before all ages,
that as God he might save
from error our human race.
From the Father eternally,
from his Mother in time
the Word above all being
is revealed to the world.
He takes the form of a slave
and becomes human,
not parted from God.
He creates Adam anew
in the womb other
who without seed conceived him.

The Annunciation is first and most obviously the announcement of the conception and birth of Jesus. The texts emphasize that it is God who is to be born of the Virgin as a human being, one of his own creatures. By being united with its Creator, humanity is created anew in the divine image and likeness.

But Mary, although she is the mother of Jesus the Christ, is also in Christian tradition the figure of the Church, the People of God. In the Orthodox Church she is never separated from the Church she signifies. Her vocation is therefore also the vocation of the Church, which is called to bring Christ into the world. As we have seen, this is visually demonstrated in the iconography of an Orthodox church, where in the semidome of the apse there is usually to be found an image of the Mother of God. The immediate reference is to the Eucharist, celebrated at the altar in the sanctuary below. As Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit, brought forth Christ, so the Church, in celebrating the Eucharist, brings him into the world, invoking the Holy Spirit to make the Eucharistic gifts the body and blood of Christ, the sacramental signs of his presence.

Mary's vocation belongs to every Christian, as well as to the Christian community as a whole. Through our willing obedience to the word of God, the Holy Spirit dwells with'in us, in the depths of our being, and there forms Christ in us. We bring him forth in our world, as we learn to let his mind inform ours, and as we put into practice the love of God, which was embodied in him, and shed abroad in human hearts by the Holy Spirit. The Annunciation reminds us that we too are overshadowed by the power of the Most High, that Christ is to be formed in us, and that we are to be the means by whom the love of God enters the world, to extend in its life his reconciling and renewing power.


(Hugh Wybrew)

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Saint John Chrysostom’s Second Homily on the Gospel according to Matthew:

"Listen to God, telling Gabriel to go to "a virgin betrothed to a man (whose name was Joseph), of the house and lineage of David.""

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St John Chrysostom, Fourth Homily on St Matthew:

"For neither Gabriel nor Matthew was able to say anything more, but only that it was of the Spirit; but how, of the Spirit, or in what manner, neither of them hath explained; for neither was it possible."

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Greg. Dial. Homily 34 in Ev.:

"To the virgin Mary was sent, not any one of the angels, but the archangel Gabriel; for it was fitting that the highest angel should come on this errand, as the bearer of the highest of all tidings. He is therefore marked by a particular name, to signify what was his effectual part in the work. For Gabriel is interpreted, "strength of God." By the strength of God then He was to be announced Who was coming as the God of strength, and mighty in battle, to put down the powers of the air."

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Luke: And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

Chrysostom:

"Seeing that his previous words had overcome the mind of the virgin, the angel drops his discourse to a humbler subject, persuading her by reference to sensible things. Hence he says, behold, Elisabeth thy cousin… Mark the discretion of Gabriel; he did not remind her of Sarah, or Rebecca, or Rachel, because they were examples of ancient times, but he brings forward a recent event, that he might the more forcibly strike her mind. For this reason also he remarked on her age, saying, She also hath conceived a son in her old age; and on her natural infirmity also. As it follows, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For not immediately at the beginning of Elisabeth’s conception did he make this announcement, but after the space of six months, that the swelling of her womb might confirm its truth." "

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Ambrose:

"Behold now the humility, the devotion of the virgin. For it follows, But Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord. She who is chosen to be His mother, calls herself His handmaid, so far was she from being exalted by the sudden promise. At the same time also by calling herself handmaid, she claimed for herself no prerogative of great grace other than that she might do what was commanded her. For about to bring forth One meek and lowly, she was bound herself to show forth lowliness. As it follows, Be it unto me according to thy word. You have her submission, you see her wish. Behold the handmaid of the Lord signifies the readiness of duty. Be it unto me according to thy word, the conception of the wish."

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Greg. Dial.:

"Through the ineffable sacrament of a holy Conception and a birth inviolable, agreeable to the truth of each nature, the same virgin was both the handmaid and mother of the Lord."

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Bede:

"Having received the consent of the virgin, the angel soon returns heavenward, as it follows, And the angel departed from her."

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Eusebius:

"Not only having obtained what he wished, but astounded at her virgin beauty, and the ripeness of her virtue."

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Pope Leo I, the Great:

"On all days and at all times, dearly beloved, the birth of our Lord and Saviour from the Virgin-mother occurs to the thoughts of believers, who meditate on divine things, so that the mind may be aroused to the acknowledgment of its Maker, and whether it be occupied in the groans of supplication, or in the shouting of praise, or in the offering of sacrifice, may employ its spiritual insight on nothing more frequently and more trustingly than on the fact that God the Son of God, begotten of the co-eternal Father, was also born by a human birth. But this birth which is to be adored in heaven and on earth is suggested to us by no day more than this when, with the early light still shedding its rays on nature, there is borne in upon our senses the brightness of this wondrous mystery. For the angel Gabriel's converse with the astonished Mary and her conception by the Holy Ghost as wondrously promised as believed, seem to recur not only to the memory but to the very eyes. For to day the Maker of the world was born of a Virgin's womb, and He, who made all natures, became Son of her, whom He created. To-day the Word of God appeared clothed in flesh, and that which had never been visible to human eyes began to be tangible to our hands as well. Today the shepherds learnt from angels' voices that the Saviour was born in the substance of our flesh and soul; and to-day the form of the Gospel message was pre-arranged by the leaders of the LORD'S flocks, so that we too may say with the arm), of the heavenly host: "Glory in the highest to GOD, and on earth peace to men of good will."

www.orthodox.co.uk/lesix.htm

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Gabriel marvellously brought to you on earth heaven’s Hail; for seeing the Maker of the Angels incarnate in you, he sang you the song of joy, O Honoured One; through it teaching mortals that you the only cause of joy have appeared to all mankind.