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Introduction
Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, is kept on March 25th each year, and celebrates the conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of his mother, a young woman named Mary from Nazareth in northern Israel. After Jesus died St John took her into his home, but tradition says that fellow evangelist St Luke, who left us this account, was also a lifelong friend and painted her first likeness.
AND in the sixth month* the angel Gabriel* was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David;* and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.*
And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.*
* That is, the sixth month after the events Luke has just been recounting, in which Elisabeth and her husband Zechariah, both advanced in years, were granted a child of their own. We learn shortly that Elisabeth was Mary’s cousin.
* Gabriel is one of the four archangels or great captains of God’s angel host, together with Michael, Raphael and Uriel (Raphael appears in the Book of Tobit and Uriel in 2 Esdras). Gabriel was already familiar to readers of the Hebrew Scriptures from his appearances in the Book of Daniel, where he helps the prophet to interpret a vision. See Daniel 8.
* That is, a descendant of King David of Israel, who reigned from about 1010 BC to 970 BC. It was essential for the saviour of Israel to be of David’s line, in order to fulfil the many prophecies in the Old Testament. St Luke, who gives us this account, traces the descent through Joseph, though noting that Joseph was only Jesus’s guardian, not his real father; St Matthew, however, traces Jesus’s descent from David through Mary.
* This is the origin of the prayer known as the Hail, Mary!. The exchange between the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary was dramatised and extended in the Akathist Hymn of Romanos the Melodist (?490-?556), which is recited especially during Great Lent and is one of the most beloved of all hymns of the Eastern churches. It stresses Gabriel’s astonishment at the role Mary was being asked to perform, and at the sight — visible to his eyes only — of the incarnation already beginning to happen in Mary’s womb. Gabriel heaps up acclamations to Mary, each beginning ‘Rejoice!’ or ‘Hail’ (the same word in Greek), in a tour de force of Biblical learning that guides us through from the disobedience of Adam and Eve to the obedience of Mary and her son Jesus. For the hymn in Church English, see ‘Akathist to the Holy Virgin’ at OrthoChristian.com.
* The name ‘Jesus’ (which is the same as Joshua) means ‘God saves’.
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