An Advent Gift Week Two

The Annunciatory Angel (excerpt)
(detail of Fra Angelico's The Annunciation)
by Luci Shaw

Wind is part of the picture, gusts
whipping the robes and body along a stretch
of baroque carpet. Gabriel seems to be
advancing up an incline, laboring with
the imperative of message, hair flattened against scalp,
features tense, hands folded tight to the chest,
agitation or awe--it is hard to tell. We can't see
the heart hammering in the unearthly body,
but the announcement, the cracking open of a space
that encircles earth and heaven, must weigh
like a gold boulder in the belly.

How might it feel (if an archangel has feelings) to bear
this news? Perhaps as confounded as the girl, there
in the corner? We worry that she might faint.
Weep. Turn away, perplexed and fearful
about opening herself. Refuse to let the wind
fill her, to buffet its nine-month seed into her earth.
She is so small and intact. Turmoil will wrench her.

She might say no.

"She might say no." No heresy here. Without the possibility of "no," a true yes cannot exist. And God, true respecter of humanity's free will, chooses to wait upon the assent of a young girl. The Creator's great plan for redemption, God's hope from in-the-beginning hinges upon what happens next, on what the girl will say.(Kathleen)

Reflection on Fra Angelico's Annunciation
by Rev. Suzanne Guthrie

For many years I watched detached, an outsider to this scene...

Suddenly though, one day, in the long series of days I stood near the porch..., I remember the point of the Angelus. We are in the place of Mary. The prayer is a reminder of Eternity breaking through at every moment, asking us, Will you? Will you wake up? Will you bear the Christ in your own soul? Will you bear compassion for the world? Will you embrace the self-sacrifice and suffering necessary to bring love into loveless places? Will you say yes to this moment and the moments ahead of you, when you leave chapel and go about your work?

The Angel Gabriel looks directly at me. 

He hovers, larger than life, not in the painting, not in the chapel, but in my workroom. Heedless of the dimensions of my study, his huge Quatrocento Florentine wings expand and contract without rustle or disturbance right through the walls, my bookcase, books and papers, the couch, the lace curtains, the windows. Waiting my answer

Each day

  a Presence

  shimmering between spheres of

  sacred and mundane

       whispers

            “Ave.” 

And,

“You, you, you! Are blessed.”

Each day

    the angels stop breathing,

    leaning in closely, waiting to hear you answer,

“Let it be done to me according to your Word.”

Suzanne Guthrie is an Episcopal priest who offers a rich weekly resource on the Sunday readings, among other things. Her website is:Edge of Enclosure