Sunday/Annunciation

                            Sunday/Annunciation

Today is the Annunciation, where Gabriel comes to Mary with her fate, fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah. Gabriel is described in Daniel thus: "His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude."

This is the angel of the Old Testament and becomes the messenger of Mohammad.

In Christianity, it is a strange, pivotal moment. Here the human being gets to say "No."
“The Annunciation” By Elizabeth Jennings

Nothing will ease the pain to come
Though now she sits in ecstasy
And lets it have its way with her.
The angel’s shadow in the room
Is lightly lifted as if he
Had never terrified her there.

The furniture again returns
To its old simple state. She can
Take comfort from the things she knows
Though in her heart new loving burns
Something she never gave to man
Or god before, and this god grows

Most like a man. She wonders how
To pray at all, what thanks to give
And whom to give them to. “Alone
To all men’s eyes I now must go”
She thinks, “And by myself must live
With a strange child that is my own.”

So from her ecstasy she moves
And turns to human things at last
(Announcing angels set aside).
It is a human child she loves
Though a god stirs beneath her breast
And great salvations grip her side.

Not that an angel entered (realize this),
scared her. Just as others would not startle
if a ray of sunlight or the moon at night
busied itself in the room, the form in which
an angel walked, did not scare her;
she barely had an idea that this stay was
difficult for angels. (O if we knew just how pure
she was. A doe once beheld her in the forest and
became so fond of her that within her was conceived
the unicorn, the animal from light, the pure animal.)

It did not scare her that he entered,
but that he was so utterly present, the angel,
bearing a young man's face, and turned to her;
that his gaze and hers, looking up to him, collided
as if everything outside had become empty,
and everything that millions saw, did, wore
became condensed in them: only her and him;
Seeing and seen, nowhere else except in this very spot
- see, that scares, and both startled.

Then the angel sang his melody.

Rilke's poem is of a forgetful angel and opens with a phrase challenging to modern Catholics.


Annunciation: The Words of the Angel" by Rainer Maria Rilke



You are no closer to God than any of us;
we all live far and wide.
But it’s wonderful how your hands
have been sanctified.
They don’t find a match in other women’s,
so brilliant from beneath their sleeves:
I am the day, I am the dew,
but you are tree.
I am rather tired now, my journey was long,
forgive that I forgot
that he, who sat in gilded garb
like in a ray of light,
sends news to you, you quiet one
(this room here startled me).
Look: I am the beginning one,
but you are tree.
I spread my wings apart
and become oddly broad;
now your little house is flooded
with my coat.
And still, you are so all alone
as never before, me you hardly see;
because I am just breath in woods,
but you are tree.
All the angels are worried now,
letting go of each other’s hands:
never before was there such a longing,
so uncertain and immense.
Perhaps it will come about soon
and you will grasp it as if in a dream.
Blessings to you, my soul perceives
you are ready and ripe to receive.
You are a great and lofty gate
and about to open up.
You are my song’s most beloved ear.
I feel there disappears and seeps
into you my word.
That’s how I came and completed
your dream among a thousand and one.
And with blinding eyes God looked at me …