How does the Christian prepare for a great feast? Our Lord tells the Pharisees, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matt 9:15). The archetypal example of a fast as preparation for a feast is Lent. Lent, also called the great fast, prepares us for Easter, the greatest feast. That’s why we fast in a special way on Good Friday to prepare ourselves for Easter Sunday. Taking Lent as our model, it would be fitting to consider some form of fasting today to prepare for one of the year’s greatest feasts. Tomorrow, for a brief moment, we will cast off our ashes and rags in the midst of Lent to celebrate the Annunciation.
Now, our Lenten fasting must always be ordered to something beyond itself: something celebratory, something joyous. Without this end, fasting is like walking in endless circles in a desert. In Lent, ultimately, we look towards the cross, and through it, the Resurrection. It is at the cross where the grace of Christ abounds, and it is at the cross where Our Lord entrusts his beloved disciple to his Mother.
The Feast of the Annunciation brings us to the foot of the cross with Mary, because to bear the Christ-child is to bear his cross. For “Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15), and he chose to do it through the cross. So, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, she consented to bear not only the Christ, but also the cross. Her word, “fiat,” embraced the will of the Word entirely—cross and all. When Our Lord entrusted his beloved disciple to his Blessed Mother, in turn, he entrusted us, as beloved disciples, to be her children, that she who is Full of Grace might form us in the grace of Christ. For, the fruit of Mary is nothing else but Jesus Christ. Entrusted to her, Our Lady will make us into alteri Christi—other Christs—that we too might bear our own crosses.
But if Lent is the cross, then the Annunciation is our joy in the midst of its carrying. By God’s grace, Our Blessed Mother is our help, pouring forth sweetness and love that we may carry our crosses joyfully. For in these crosses we honor her as the cause of our joy, that we might join St. Paul in saying, “far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14).
The Feast of the Annunciation is placed in the midst of Lent as an oasis in the desert. Just as the Lord did not leave the Israelites without food and drink for their forty years in the exodus from Egypt, he does not leave us empty-handed in our fast. Along the way, we are blessed with the company of his Blessed Mother.
✠
Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
