Sermon on the Annunciation,
Incarnation of the Eternal Word
by
Saint Alphonsus Liguori
Saint Thomas calls the
mystery of the Incarnation of the
Eternal Word, "the miracle of
miracles". What greater prodigy could the world
behold, than a woman become the
Mother of
God, and a God clothed in
human flesh. Let us therefore
consider today these two prodigies.
First Point:
Mary, by
her humility, became the
Mother of
her Creator.
Second Point: The
Creator, in
His goodness, became the Son
of His own creature.
First Point
Mary, by her humility, became the Mother of
her Creator.
God, having
determined to manifest to the world His
immense goodness, by humbling Himself
so far as to become man, to
redeem lost
man, and having to choose a
Virgin Mother, sought among virgins
the one who was the most humble.
He found that the
Blessed Virgin Mary surpassed all others in
sanctity, as greatly as
she surpassed them in
humility, and therefore chose
her for His
Mother. "He
hath regarded the humility of His handmaid" - Luke
1:48. "She did not say", remarks
Saint Lawrence Justinian, "He hath regarded
the virginity or the innocence, but only the humility, of His
handmaid". And before him Saint Jerome had said, that
"God chose her to be His Mother more on account
of her humility than of all her sublime virtues".
  Now
we understand that Mary was that one
who was spoken of in the sacred Canticles under the name of
Spikenard, a small and lowly plant, which by its sweet odor, drew
the King of Heaven, the
Eternal Word, from the bosom of
His Father, into
her womb, there to clothe
Himself with
human flesh, "While the King was at His repose, my
Spikenard sent forth the odor thereof" - Canticles
1:11; which Saint Antoninus thus exclaims: "Spiknard,
from its being a small and lowly herb, was a type of Mary, who in the
highest degree gave forth the sweet odor of her humility".
Before him, Saint Bernard had said: "She
was indeed worthy to be looked upon by the Lord, whose beauty the King
so greatly desired, and by whose most sweet odor He was drawn from the
eternal repose of His Father's bosom". So that
God, attracted by the
humility of the
Blessed Virgin, when He
became man for the
Redemption
of man, chose
her for His
Mother. He
would not, however, for the greater glory
and merit of
His Mother, become
her Son
without her consent. "He
would not take flesh from her", says the Abbot Williams,
"unless she gave it". Behold, whilst
this humble little
Virgin was in
her poor cottage, sighing and entreating the
Lord, as it was related to Saint
Elizabeth of Hungary, that He
would send the world its Redeemer,
the Archangel Gabriel came, as the bearer, on the part of
God, of the great embassy, and
saluted her, "Hail,
full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women"
- Luke 1:28. Hail, O Mary,
full of grace; for thou art rich
in that grace which surpasses
the grace given to all
men and angels.
The Lord is with
thee, and always was with
thee, assisting
thee with
His grace. Thou art
blessed amongst all women; for all
others fell under the curse of sin;
but thou, as the
Mother of the
Blessed One, wast preserved from every
stain, and always wast, and always
wilt be blessed.
What answer does the humble
Mary give to a salutation so full of
praises?
She does not reply; but, astonished at them, is
confounded and
troubled, "Who having heard, was
troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of
salutation this should be" - Luke 1:29. Why was
she
troubled? was it that she
feared an illusion? No, for
she was sure that it was a
celestial spirit who spoke to her.
Her modesty
was perhaps troubled at the sight of
an angel, under a human form,
as some have thought? No, the text is clear, "She
was troubled at his saying", to which Eusebius Emissenus
adds, "not at his appearance, but at what he
said". This trouble,
then, proceeded entirely from her
humility, and was caused by the
great praises, which were so far from her
own humble estimate of
herself. Hence, the more
she heard
herself praised, the more deeply did
she enter into the depth of
her own nothingness. Saint
Bernardine of Sienna writes, that "had the
angel said, O Mary, thou art the greatest sinner in the world, her
astonishment would not have been so great; the sound of such high
praises filled her with fear".
But the Blessed Virgin, I say,
already understood the sacred Scriptures;
she well knew that the time foretold by the Prophets
for the coming of the Messiah had
arrived; she knew that the
seventy weeks of Daniel were
completed, and that the scepter of Juda had passed into the hands
of Herod, a stranger, according to the prophecy of Jacob;
she also knew that the mother of the
Messiah was to be a
Virgin. She
then heard the angel give her
praises, which it was evident could apply to no other than a
Mother of God. May not a
thought or doubt have entered her
mind, that she was
perhaps this chosen Mother? No,
her profound humility did
not even allow her to have a
doubt. Those praises only
caused her such great
fear, that the angel himself
was obliged to encourage her not
to fear, as Saint Peter
Chrysologus writes, "As Christ was pleased
to be comforted by an angel, so had the Blessed Virgin to be comforted
by one". Saint Gabriel said, "Fear
not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God" - Luke
1:30. As if he had said: Why fearest
thou, O
Mary? Knowest thou not
that God exalts the
humble?
Thou in thine own eyes
art lowly and of no account, and therefore
He, in His
goodness, exalts thee to
the dignity of being
His Mother.
"Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and
shalt bring forth a Son; and thou shalt call His name Jesus"
- Luke 1:30.
In the mean time the angel waits to know whether
she is willing to be the
Mother of
God. Saint Bernard addresses
her, saying, "The angel awaits thy
reply, and we also, O Lady, on whom the sentence of condemnation weighs
so heavily, await the word of mercy". "Behold,
O holy Virgin, the price of our salvation, which will be the blood of
that Son now to be formed in thy womb. This price is offered to thee to
pay for our sins, and deliver us from death ; we shall be instantly
delivered if thou consentest". "Thy
Lord Himself desires thy consent ; for by it He has determined to save
the world. He desires it with an ardor equal to the love with which He
has loved thy beauty". "Answer, O
sacred Virgin", says Saint Augustine, "why
delayest thou the salvation of the world, which depends on thy consent?"
But see, Mary already replies to the
angel, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord;
be it done to me according to thy word" - Luke 1:38. O
admirable answer, which rejoiced Heaven,
and brought an immense treasure of good things to the world. Answer
which drew the only-begotten Son
from the bosom of His Eternal Father
into this world to become man; for
these words had hardly fallen from the lips of
Mary before "the Word was made flesh";
the Son of God became also the
Son of Mary.
"O powerful fiat!", exclaims
Saint Thomas of Villanova; "O
efficacious fiat! O fiat to be venerated above every other
fiat!", for with that fiat,
Heaven came on Earth, and the
Earth was raised to Heaven.
Let us now examine Mary's answer
more closely, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord".
By this answer the humble
Virgin meant: Behold the servant
of the Lord, obliged to do that
which her
Lord commands; since He
well sees my nothingness, and since
all that I have is
His, who can say that
He has chosen
me for any merit of
my own? "Behold
the handmaid of the Lord". What
merits can a servant have, for which
she should be chosen to be the
Mother of
her Lord? Let not the
servant , then, be praised, but the
goodness alone of that
Lord, Who
is graciously pleased to regard so lowly a creature , and make
her so great. "O
humility", exclaims the Abbot Guarric, "as
nothing in its own eyes, yet sufficiently great for the Divinity.
Insufficient for itself, sufficient in the eyes of God to contain Him in
her womb, Whom the heavens cannot contain". Let us also hear
the exclamation of Saint Bernard on this subject. He says, "And
how, O Lady, couldst thou unite in thy heart so humble an opinion of
thyself with such great purity, with such innocence, and so great a
plenitude of grace, as thou didst possess?" "Whence
this humility", continues the Saint, "and
so great humility, O Blessed One?"
Lucifer, seeing himself
enriched by God with
extraordinary beauty, aspired to exalt his
throne above the stars, and make himself
like God: "I
will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God,
I will sit in the mountain of the covenant . . . I will ascend above the
height of the clouds, I will be like the most High" -
Isaiah 14:13-14. O, what would that proud
spirit have said, had he
ever been adorned with the gifts
of Mary? He
being exalted by God, became
proud, and was sent to
Hell; but the more the
humble Mary
saw herself enriched, so much
the more did she concentrate
herself in
her own nothingness; and therefore
God raised
her to the dignity of
being His
Mother, having made her
so incomparably greater than all other creatures, that, as Saint
Andrew of Crete says, "there is no one who
is not God, who can be compared with Mary". Hence Saint
Anselm also says, "there is no one who is
thy equal, O Lady, for all are either above or beneath thee; God alone
is above thee, and all that is not God is inferior to thee".
To what greater dignity could a
creature be raised than that of Mother
of her
Creator? "To be the Mother of God",
Saint Bonaventure writes, "is the
greatest grace which can be conferred on a creature. It is such that God
could make a greater world, a greater Heaven, but He cannot exalt a
creature more than by making her His Mother". This the
Blessed Virgin was pleased
herself to express, when
she said, "He
that is mighty, hath done great things to me" - Luke
1:49. But here the Abbot of Celles reminds
her, "God did not create thee for
Himself only; He gave thee to the angels as their restorer, and to men
as their repairer". So that God
did not create Mary for
Himself only, but
He created
her for man also; that is
to say, to repair the ruin entailed
upon him by
sin. We now pass to the second
point.
Second Point
The Creator in His goodness
became the Son of His own creature
Our first father
Adam sinned; for,
ungrateful to
God for the many
gifts he had received from Him,
he rebelled against
Him by eating the forbidden fruit.
God was therefore obliged to drive
him from before His Face, and to
condemn him and all his posterity
to eternal death. But afterwards,
pitying him, and moved by the bowels of
His mercy,
He was pleased to come on Earth to become
man, and thus satisfy the
Divine Justice,
paying with
His own sufferings the
punishment which we deserved for our
sins.
"He came down from Heaven , and
was made man". This we are taught by the
Holy Church: "And
He was made man". O prodigy, O excess of the
love of God;
a God became
man! Did a prince of this world, seeing a worm
dead in its hole, wish to restore it
to life; and were he told that to do so, it would be necessary that he
should himself become a worm, enter its dwelling, and there at the price
of his life make it a bath in his own blood, and that thus only could
its life be restored, what would the reply of such a prince be? "No",
he would say, "what does it signify to me
whether the worm comes to life again or not, that I should shed my life
and die to restore its life"? Of what import was it to
God that
men should be lost, since
they had merited it by
their sins?
Would His happiness have been
diminished thereby?
No, indeed. It was because
God's love for men was
so truly great that He came upon
Earth and humbled
Himself to take
flesh from a
Virgin; and taking the form of a
servant, became
man; that is,
He made Himself a
worm like us: "But emptied Himself, taking
the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit
found as a man" - Philippians 2:7.
He
is God, as the
Father, immense,
omnipotent,
sovereign, and in all things equal to the
Father; but when
He was made
man in the womb of Mary,
He became a
creature, a servant,
weak, and less than the
Father.
 Behold
Him thus humbled in the
womb of
Mary; there He accepted the
command of His Father,
Who willed that after
three-and-thirty years of
suffering, He should
die cruelly executed on a
Cross: "He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the
death of the Cross" - Philippians 2:8. Behold
Him
as a Child in the
womb of His
Mother. He there conformed
Himself in all
things to the will of
His Father, and, inflamed with
love for us,
He
offered Himself willingly: "He was offered because it was
His own will,
and He opened not His mouth: He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be
dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and He shall not open His mouth"
- Isaiah 53:7. He offered
Himself, I say, to
suffer all for our
salvation.
He then foresaw the scourging,
and offered His body;
He foresaw the
thorns, and offered His head;
He foresaw the
nails, and offered His hands and
feet; He foresaw the
Cross, and offered
His life. And why was
He pleased to
suffer so much for us ungrateful
sinners? It was because He loved
us; "Who hath loved us, and washed us from our
sins in His own blood" - Apocalypse 1:5.
He saw us
soiled with sin, and prepared us a bath in
His own blood, that we might thereby
be cleansed, and become dear to
God: "Christ
also hath loved us, and hath delivered Himself for us" -
Ephesians 5:2. He saw us
condemned to death, and prepared to
die Himself,
that we might live; and seeing us
cursed by
God on account of our sins,
He was pleased to charge
Himself with the
curses which we had deserved, that
we might be saved: "Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"
- Galatians 3:13.
Saint Francis of Paul had, then, indeed reason,
in considering the mystery of a
God made
man and dying through
love for us, to exclaim, "O
charity! O charity! O charity!" Did not
faith assure us of all that the
Son of God did and suffered
for us, who could ever believe it? Ah Christians! the
love which
Jesus Christ had and has for us indeed drives and
forces us to love Him, "For
the charity of Christ presseth us" - 2Corinthians
5:14. Tender indeed are the sentiments expressed by Saint Francis de
Sales on these words of Saint Paul; he says, "Knowing
then, that Jesus, Who was truly God, has loved us, and loved us so much
as to die, and to die on a Cross for us, is not this to have our hearts
under a wine-press, and to feel them forced and so strongly pressed that
love issues from them by the very violence with which they are pressed;
and the greater this violence is with which they are pressed, the more
sweet and amiable is it".
But here came the tears
of Saint John, "He came unto His own,
and His own received Him not" - John 1:11. Why did the
only-begotten Son of God become
man on Earth,
suffer and die for us,
if it was not that we might love Him?
"God became man", says Hugo of
Saint Victor, "that man might love Him with
greater freedom". "Jesus Christ",
says Saint Augustine, "came on Earth
principally that man might know how much He loved him". And
if a God loves us so much,
He requires, with
Justice, that we
love Him. "He
made known His love", says Saint Bernard, "that
He might experience thine". He
has shown us the greatness of the love He
bears us, that He may obtain our
love at least out of gratitude.
 O
Eternal Word, Thou camest from Heaven on Earth to become man and to
die for man, that Thou mightest be loved by man; how is it, then,
that among men there are so few who love thee? Ah, infinite Beauty,
amiable Infinity, worthy of infinite love, behold me; I am one of
those ungrateful creatures whom Thou hast loved so much, but have
not yet known how to love Thee; nay even, instead of loving Thee, I
have greatly offended Thee. But Thou becamest man and didst die to
pardon sinners who detest their sins, and wish to love Thee. Lord,
behold me; see, I am a sinner, it is true; but I repent of the
crimes I have committed against Thee, and I desire to love Thee;
pity me. And thou, O holy Virgin, who by thy humility becamest
worthy to be the Mother of God, and as such art also our Mother, the
Refuge, the Advocate of sinners, do thou pray for me, recommend me
to this Son, Who loves thee so much, and refuses nothing that thou
askest Him. Tell Him to pardon me; tell Him to give me His holy
love; tell Him to save me; that with thee I may one day love Him
face-to-face in Paradise.
Amen
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