Annunciation

THE ANNUNCIATION

SOWERS OF THE SEED IN THE SEWERS OF THE WORLD

This very first mystery of the Rosary is, in a certain sense, the end of things! Not the end in the sense that all is finished, but “the end” in the sense of “the goal” or “the purpose” that God had in mind. God created Mary for the purpose of Mary being the Mother of God’s only-begotten Son. That was to be her mission—to be the Mother of God and the channel through which God would physically enter the physical world. Not that God needed anything or anybody to come into this world, but God usually chooses to work through and with what God has created. Since God made the world and all things in it—human beings included—then God will use His creation, like a craftsman uses the tools that he has made, to help and further His work. Jesus Christ could have entered this world in the same way as He left this world at His Ascension into Heaven—He could have done so with His own powers, without the intervention or medium of anyone else. However, Jesus chose Mary as the ‘vehicle’ by which He would come into this world, and Mary is the ‘vehicle’ by which Jesus wants us to go to Him. Hence the phrase “To Jesus through Mary”!

Do Good and Avoid Evil
That brings up the next point, of “Why did Jesus come into the world?” Well, of course, He came for the sake of our souls—as He Himself said: “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He also said: “I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance” (Luke 5:32). He commanded us: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like to it: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31). This is His message in a nutshell—to leave sin behind and start loving and serving God with all our heart! Holy Scripture also puts it into a nutshell: “Decline from evil and do good!” (Psalm 36:27); “Turn away from evil and do good!” (Psalm 33:15), and St. Peter echoes this saying, “Let him decline from evil, and do good!” (1 Peter 3:11). Even Our Lady’s messages, over the last 200 hundred years, are basically saying the same thing: God is already offended too much; sinners are falling into Hell in large numbers; they must stop sinning and do penance; but they won’t leave sin unless good people do good things, such as offering prayers and sacrifices, so that those sinners get the graces they need to stop sinning and start loving God as He deserves.

Just as very few people listened to Jesus’ message around 2,000 years ago, so, too, most people are not listening to Mary’s message today—she herself complains to Lucia of Fatima of that very thing, saying that even the good people are not listening to her message; instead, they go on doing the good that they want to do and ignore the good that Heaven wants them to do!  This attitude is what made Jesus say: “The Son of man, when He cometh [at the end of time], shall He find, think you, Faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). Speaking of the “end-times” Jesus says: “Many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved” (Matthew 24:11-13). Our Lady, the Queen of Prophets, has warned us of these false prophets—she has also said that Russia would spread her errors throughout the world and that even Rome itself would lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.   Yet the world does not want to listen, it buries its head in the sand, or rather, it buries its head in materialism, entertainment, parties and games, pleasures and treasures, and ignores the warnings of Heaven.

God or Mammon
“For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:8). Our Lord warned us: “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). We cannot serve God and the pleasures and treasures of this world!  “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

This is essentially what Our Lord argues against the materialistic Jews of His time, and which is still true for the hordes of materialistic people today, ourselves included:  “If God were your Father, you would indeed love Me … You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do ... You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you, that you shall die in your sins. For if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sin.” … When He spoke these things, many believed in Him. Then Jesus said to those Jews, who believed Him: ‘If you continue in My word, you shall be My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free!’” (John 8:42; 8:23-24; 8:30-32, 44).

God does not hate the world, otherwise Jesus would not have come to try and save the world! “For God so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting”  (John 3:16). But the world did not want to listen, it did not want to believe; and that is why most souls die in that hardened state of mind, refusing to change their lives, refusing to love God with all their mind, heart, soul and strength; they give that love primarily to the world and still expect to be saved by God—but they are mistaken and they are lost for eternity!

Make Jesus and Mary Known
Just as the Archangel Gabriel comes to Mary, to make known to her God’s desire and offer—that she become the Mother of God, in order to bring God into this world—so too does God make known to us His desire for us to imitate Mary, in order to bring Jesus back into a world that has rejected Him. As St. Thérèse of Lisieux (whom Pope St. Pius X called the ideal model of a saint for the modern world), once said: “Jesus is so little loved because He is so little known!”  We cannot love what we do not know. Yet God also wishes to establish, in the world, devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate of Mary—as Our Lady revealed at Fatima. Mary is also so little loved, because she is so little known. As the Venerable Father Frederick Faber writes:

“Mary is not half enough preached. Devotion to her is low and thin and poor… Hence it is that Jesus is not loved, that heretics are not converted, that the Church is not exalted; that souls, which might be saints, wither and dwindle; that the Sacraments are not rightly frequented, nor souls enthusiastically evangelized. Jesus is obscured because Mary is kept in the background. Thousands of souls perish because Mary is withheld from them. It is the miserable, unworthy shadow, which we call our devotion to the Blessed Virgin, that is the cause of all these wants and blights, these evils and omissions and declines. Yet, if we are to believe the revelations of the saints, God is pressing for a greater, a wider, a stronger, quite another devotion to His Blessed Mother.” (Fr. Faber, Preface to his translation of St. Louis de Montfort’s book True Devotion to Mary).

What is our attitude? “You don’t understand! I’d like to do something, but I am too busy! … Spouse, children, work, and a hundred other things!” Jesus saw the same attitude in Martha, the sister of Mary Magdalen.  “Martha was busy about much serving. Who stood and said: ‘Lord, hast thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? Speak to her, therefore, that she help me!’ And the Lord, answering, said to her: ‘Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things! But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her!’” (Luke 10:40-42). We should always find time to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn of Him and learn about Him, and likewise concerning His Blessed Mother. Then we should make Jesus and Mary known and loved in our own little world in which we live and work: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations...Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Your Annunciation, Your Mission
The Archangel gave Mary a message and a mission! We too have been given a message and a mission! We are the sowers of the seed in the sewer of the world! God wishes to establish devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary (with all that necessarily comes from this: such as the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart, etc.). We have to do all that we can to make Mary known, make Mary loved and make Mary served, in the the little world in which each of us lives. We cannot the change the world at large, but we can change our own little world in which daily operate. God will not judge us on what we did or did not do on the other side of the world, but He will judge us on what we did or did not do in the little part of the world that surrounds us. God could act directly without our help, but God does not do the extraordinary where the ordinary would suffice. Our Lord chose men and women to be His Apostles and disciples. Mary chooses souls today in the same way and with the same end or goal or purpose in mind: to preach the message and words of God, to make Jesus and Mary known and loved. Just as in the Parable of the Talents, we have been given the graces to do so—will we do so, or will we bury our talents or graces in the ground, or bury them under the mountain of materialism, with its pleasures and treasures? Our eternity might depend on what we do about it!