2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38
Receiving gifts
Preparation is the watchword for Advent; by the time the Fourth Sunday of Advent arrives, we're primed to be prepared. We're buying gifts for family and friends; we're anticipating plans we've made to spend time with family on Christmas; and we're looking ahead to the New Year ahead. The Church rightly encourages us to take advantage of this season by being giving, generous, and kind. We open ourselves to the needy; we give end-of-year donations to charities; and amid the gathering excitement for our own celebrations, we try to think about those less fortunate than we are.
All these things are good. But this week, let's think for a moment about the nature of gifts and what it means to receive them. The beauty in any gift is not merely its giving. It must be received.
This week's readings are powerful: In the first reading from 2 Samuel, Nathan, a servant of King David, is given a dream in which he is told he must tell David to build a House for the Lord, where his throne will be placed for eternity. In the epistle, Paul simply offers a declaration of praise at the disclosure of Christ's coming, refining and intensifying that anticipation.
But it's the Gospel reading from Luke that requires us to imagine the meaning of receiving gifts. This is the telling of the Annunciation which, along with the Nativity and the Crucifixion, is one of the most iconic scenes in the New Testament. We get one of our most beautiful prayers from this passage, the Hail Mary; and we get one of our most beautiful early hymns, the Magnificat, immediately following.
If you have a spare moment and a good internet connection, do yourself a favor and do an image search for Fra Angelico, Annunciation. There are actually two paintings: both are superb. In the earlier painting - from 1430 - you'll see Mary sitting with her arms crossed in a gesture of submission inside a beautiful pavilion. The Archangel Gabriel, clothed in pink silk crepe with extended golden wings, supplicates before Mary while a shadowy oval of energy radiates behind him. His arms are crossed in a gesture identical to Mary's. Above Gabriel, a golden stream of divine sunlight slides from a solar source in whose glow a pair of hands is seen and which have released the dove of the Holy Spirit who makes its way to Mary's awaiting reception.
The image of the golden radiation of the annunciation of Mary's pregnancy is a motif in many other such paintings and icons. In some of them, words are represented emitting from Gabriel's mouth and extending to Mary's ear. In others, there are both words and the golden beam sent from the Divine Source.
Fra Angelico's second Annunication, a fresco from 1440-45, depicts again Mary in a pavilion with arms crossed sitting in a gesture of receptive humility and Gabriel in pink, but this time with multi-colored, fire-fangled feathers in his wings, approaching her with the same gesture: arms crossing his chest, stooping humbly before Mary. This time, there's no golden ray. Instead, they are looking each other directly in the eye - a moment of profound recognition. Mary is ready to receive the gift that Gabriel has brought.
Many of us are familiar with the furniture made by the Shakers, a sect of Anabaptist Christians who thrived for a short period in the United States in the 19th century, living communally and worshiping God ecstatically. Thomas Merton once wrote, in praise of a Shaker chair, "The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it."
What, after all these centuries, can these words of the Annunciation teach us? Hopefully something like this: that like Mary receiving the benediction of Gabriel we are capable of believing that God is sending us his gifts because we are worthy to receive them.
Peter O'Leary is on Ascension's School Board and is a lector. He teaches religion and poetry at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the University of Chicago.
