The Solemnity of the Annunciation, celebrated on March 25th, honors the profound meeting between the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, as recorded in St. Luke’s Gospel. On this day St. Gabriel announced to Mary Immaculate that she would miraculously conceive a Child by the Holy Spirit, the long-awaited Messiah who would save mankind from their sins. This is the moment of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s great fiat of perfect submission to the Divine will. This day on which the Church celebrates the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in the womb of His Blessed Mother is exactly nine months before the Feast of the Nativity on December 25th.
“The queen bee never settles in her hive without being surrounded by her swarm, and charity never takes possession of the heart without bringing in her train all other virtues, exercising them and bringing them into play as a general his troops. But she does not call them forth suddenly, all at once, nor in all times and places. The good man is like a tree planted by the water-side that will bring forth its fruit in due season, because when a soul is watered with charity, it brings forth good works seasonably and with discretion.”— St. Francis de Sales, p.117
Jesus tells the crowd, “If you make my word your home, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They respond ‘”We are descendants of Abraham and have never been the slaves to anyone! What do you mean by ‘We will be free?’” Jesus answered them, “I tell you sincerely, anyone who chooses a dead-ended life and stops growing, is in sin, and that is slavery” (see John 8:31–35).
We have all experienced it. When someone wants to dislike us, no matter what we do, it will be interpreted in the worst possible fashion. As we often say, “You can’t win.” When someone’s heart is hardened already, you could be Jesus himself, and they will seriously see you as wrong, inferior, dangerous, and heretical—which is what is about to happen in Holy Week. At that point, no matter what evil a person decides to do to you, it will be deemed virtuous and praiseworthy by hardened or paranoid people in the hostile camp. “He is a terrorist!” they might say. Never having the humility or honesty to admit that to someone else, looking from a different perspective (which is deemed totally wrong), he probably looks like a sacrificial and dedicated freedom fighter. John had to make a clear villain here for the sake of the debate, so he safely chose his own race and people. There are claims and counterclaims of truth, freedom, lineage, tradition, killing, and divine illegitimacy. Jesus fights back well, but he does not have a chance. Their hearts are already hardened in place, which in this archetypal story is really not a statement about Jews as much as it is about all of humanity. “I have my conclusions already, do not bother me with any new information that might make me change my judgment.” Most Christians would probably be slow to admit that by these criteria almost all of us would have opposed Jesus. “This is not our tradition, he is not from our group, and he has no credentials!”
“God of perfect freedom, open spaces inside of our minds, our hearts, and our memories, so we can just begin to be free. Do not let me be hardened against anyone of your creatures, so that I cannot hear and respect their truth.”
St. Catherine of Sweden (1331-1381) was the fourth of eight children born to St. Bridget of Sweden and her husband, Ulfo. As a child she was sent by her parents to be educated in a convent, and was later given in marriage to a German nobleman. Catherine was able to persuade her husband, a virtuous young man, to live together in a mutual vow of perpetual chastity. They lived happily together in complete devotion to God.
After the death of her father, and with her husband’s consent, Catherine accompanied her mother to Rome. While there, Catherine’s husband died. She continued to be a companion to her mother and rejected further offers of marriage. Her mother worked to establish a new religious order, called the Order of the Holy Savior, or the Bridgettines.
After her mother’s death, Catherine took her body back to Sweden for burial while continuing the work of establishing the Bridgettines. She later traveled back to Rome to advocate for her mother’s canonization and for Pope Urban VI to ratify her Order. While in Rome she became great friends with St. Catherine of Siena. St. Catherine of Sweden finally returned to Sweden and became abbess of the newly founded Bridgettines, living the rest of her days as a model of prayer and penance.
St. Catherine of Sweden is the patron saint against abortions and miscarriages. Her feast day is March 24th.
“Who is Lucifer? He is a pure spirit, and was the most enlightened of all pure spirits, but is now at war with God and with His rule. The mystery of sin is merely the result of this conflict, which manifests itself in every possible way. Lucifer, as much as in him lies, will leave no stone unturned to destroy what God has made and ordered. Wherever he enters, there is the work of God defaced.”—Jean-Pierre de Caussade, p. 114
“I urge you with all the strength of my soul to approach the Eucharistic Table as often as possible. Feed on this Bread of the Angels from which you will draw the strength to fight inner struggles.”— Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
We have all seen the rod of Asclepius, or its common variation, the caduceus, on medical insignia throughout the world. It was the symbol of this Greek god of healing, but is also found here in our First Reading from the book of Numbers (21:4–9). It is a single or double serpent winding around a pole, and we are not sure if the Greeks or the Hebrews had it first. But surely its meaning was a universal discovery that today we would perhaps call vaccination! In short, “the cause is also the cure”! Who would have thought? It seems to be true both medically and psychologically. At any rate, we have Moses prescribing such medicine to the complaining Hebrews in the desert, who were being bit by winged/fiery serpents. The meaning and healing symbol returns again in John’s Gospel on many levels, all of them significant. The recurring phrase is, “the lifted up one.” It has now become a rallying cry for the Jesus who was raised up on the cross and thus “vaccinated us against” doing the same (3:13 and 19:37). Jesus being “lifted up” is offered as a healing icon of love to all of history (12:32), and finally, as a victory sign of the final resurrection and ascension of all the human ones, as is prefigured in today’s account about the archetypal “Human One,” Jesus (8:28). This is powerful material, just as vaccinations always are. We have a Divine Medicine brought down to a small but potent dosage so we can handle it and it can handle us! That is what true spiritual symbols always do. Remember what we said earlier in Lent: Any direct contact with God is like contact with an electric wire—it burns you unless you have some good filters and a very humble humanity to receive it. No wonder so many Catholics and Orthodox never tired of hanging images of the crucified Jesus in their homes and in their churches. We needed to “lift up” and “gaze upon” the transformative image just as Moses first did in the desert. It can and did and will change many lives and much of history.
St. Rafqa / Rafka (Arabic for Rebecca) (1832–1914) was born in Himlaya, a Maronite village in the Lebanese mountains. She was an only child, and her mother died when she was seven. After her father’s remarriage there was much family discord as to whom Rafqa should marry. Not wanting to wed any of the men in question, she turned to God and entered religious life at the age of 21.
Rebecca had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary which she learned from her mother. She studied and served as a teacher for many years, but, after witnessing and surviving a massacre of Christians, she decided at the age of 39 to become a cloistered contemplative nun living under a strict rule in a monastery. Here, Rafqa prayed earnestly that she might share in the sufferings of Christ. Her prayers were heard almost immediately. She became blind and paralyzed, and over the course of 30 years she struggled with deteriorating health and incredible pain. All of her sufferings she united to the sufferings of Christ without complaint.
Under obedience to her superior Rebecca worked on an autobiography near the end of her life. She died at the age of 82, and her grave is credited with many miracles. St. Rafqa is a Catholic Maronite saint canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 2001. She is the patron of sick people, bodily ills, and loss of parents. Her feast day is March 23rd.
