In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
“Today is the beginning of our salvation, the revelation of the eternal mystery! The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin, as Gabriel announces the glad tidings of grace. Together with him let us cry out to the Theotokos: Rejoice, O though who art full of grace, the Lord is with Thee!”
The closer humanity approaches the end of its earthly history, the more huge streams of information of all kinds overwhelm us, capturing our minds and hearts. And no matter how useful it may be (and most of this information is absolutely meaningless for our salvation), we no longer remember what happened yesterday or the day before yesterday. Because the human brain was not created to process the endless deluge of words, images, and events typical of our age. Moreover, most of these news messages are negative. The fact is that the media sphere is designed to prioritize shocking, unpleasant and negative news: accidents, catastrophes, deaths, illnesses, and the like.
And, of course, there is a great deal of sin, and, most notoriously, a massive amount of fuss in this tsunami of information. Apparently, the devil is working very hard to make us forget about the most important thing—to forget about the Gospel, about the event that we are celebrating today. And unfortunately, we Christians are not strangers to this spirit. And we often don’t even know what we are celebrating, let alone when and why.
But today we commemorate the deliverance of the human race from the power of the devil and sin; which is why today we have wonderful readings from the Old Testament about how the Lord appeared to the Prophet Moses and told him that He heard the groaning and saw the afflictions of His people in Egypt and that He would lead them from Egyptian slavery to the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey (cf. Exod. 3: 8).
The holy Archangel Gabriel announced to the Most Pure Virgin that She would conceive by the Holy Spirit, give birth to a Son, and name Him Jesus, and He would be the Savior of the world; because this is God, Who did not disdain to take on human form (flesh and blood) for the salvation of mankind and become related by flesh and blood to all of us. He did it in order to suffer and bring us out of this Egyptian bondage of sin—from the power of the devil, into which we voluntarily, of our own free will, gave ourselves, and into which our ancestors Adam and Eve gave themselves when they sinned and disobeyed God. All people since Adam and Eve have been under this power—all humanity has suffered. Each one of us can either fight the power of the devil over himself, mitigate its influence, and live in freedom and in the Holy Spirit, or plunge further and further into the “prisons” of the devil through our sinful life.
And today, the Good News, which transcends all the news that we receive, is the most important for us. God is born, and the Most Holy Virgin conceives our Savior—the Lord Jesus Christ. This is especially important now in the final days of Lent. Many people note how quickly it all flies by. Indeed, time is accelerating now, and our attention spans are decreasing; Lent seems to have just begun, but there are only a few days left. But on this feast we gather in spirit and realize all the responsibility that we bear as Christians.
The Lord did not become incarnate—conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Most Pure Virgin Mary—so that we could live in sin and serve the devil, but in order to save His people and lead them out of slavery. And we will follow Him, listen to Him, do as He taught us, and then salvation will be our future; then the Heavenly Kingdom, in which our Lord Jesus Christ, God and Creator of the world, will reign, will be our Kingdom, and not the kingdom of the devil, which the demons and our sins have prepared for us.
Let us rejoice in this event today, as did the Most Pure Mother of God, Who spent all Her time in prayer and reading the Holy Scriptures. And today we will not only find some physical solace, but also spiritual solace. And let those who have been vouchsafed to partake of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ go and tell their neighbors, relatives and friends that Lent is ending soon, it is Holy Week now, and at this time even the most careless sinners should prepare and come to church on Holy and Great Thursday to confess and take Communion. It will be the true Good News, which we will share with this world together with Christ in commemoration of today’s feast. Amen.
