Today (and every day – in centuries past and centuries ahead; in this created time and in His eternity) Christ comes. He always comes, He always searches, He always abandons Himself so He may find me, and you, and all of us. He does not change into something He was not, He merely shows us who we truly are, who we have always been. The miracle is not that God has the power to become incarnate, but that we – this fallen humanity of ours – were created with the built-in ability to be One with Him.
The Feast of the Annunciation is the beginning of this revelation of our true selves. We see in the Mother of God THE human being, consumed by Love for Her Creator, cleansed by the fire of this Love. And Christ comes and is incarnate in Her. Christ comes and is born of Her. Christ comes and She becomes One with Him, entirely Christ-like in Her person.
This may all sound distant and irrelevant, but the same Christ Loves us today with the same Love, He comes to us now as He did then, He craves to live in the temple of our being and to reveal to us the depth and beauty of our own humanity. The real miracle is that He still loves us, that He still has faith in us and still respects our freedom to choose between the Heights of Heaven and the depths of hell.
Seeing Christ we see ourselves, who we should be, could be, crave to be. To see Christ is to face one’s Salvation and Judgement at the same time, because seeing Him reveals to us our true selves – and that can save, or that can hurt.
The world is fallen today in more ways that one. It has always been fallen, perhaps never as horribly as at the time of His Incarnation. Yet He gave His life to save this fallen world and we must SEE that. Pascha is ahead. The Resurrection is ahead. But – before the Resurrection – the Cross is facing us in Its beauty and its glory.
Seeing Christ we see who we truly are. We can choose to follow Him to that Cross, for the life and salvation of our neighbour. Or we can choose to define ourselves outside His Life and enter the darkness of the nothingness we are made of. Remember the words of the Gospel – he who wants to save his life will lose it.
Bring joy into the world. Bring light into the world. Let go of judgement, let go of condemnation. Take the sins of others upon yourselves and repent on their behalf. Learn to rejoice in your cross – turn it into a tool for the salvation of your neighbour, not only your own salvation. Heaven is not Heaven if my brother is not there.
I don’t know what else to tell you on this Feast Day of Christ’s Mad Love for us… Do not allow sadness to enter your heart, my dear, dear one. Your heart is made for the One Who is Love.