In this video, we learn about the “Good News before the Good News,” as the Archangel Gabriel announced that the Virgin Mary would conceive and give birth to Christ. We follow the Orthodox Church’s commemoration of the event, and the different elements involved in its celebration.
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The Feast of the Annunciation of Our Most Holy Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary is celebrated on March 25 each year. The Feast commemorates the announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would become incarnate and enter into this world through her womb.
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Listen to the hymns from the Feast of the Annunciation of the Theotokos
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Throughout this month, we venerate the Holy Virgin Mary through special services. These services include the Holy Salutations held on each Friday of Lent, which comprise the portions of the beautiful, rich, and illustrious hymn of the Akathist to the Theotokos. We also celebrate on March 25 the glorious Feast of the Annunciation to the Theotokos, when the Archangel Gabriel told Mary that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and that she would give birth to a Son, whose name would be Jesus (Luke 1:26-38).
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In the Annunciation we learn, happiness comes not when we reluctantly accept a new situation, a burdensome challenge or difficult responsibility, but when we embrace it and thank God for the opportunity to grow. Mary did not simply resign herself to her fate. She saw God acting, God loving, God offering, and she whole-heartedly embraced the new reality and burst into a song of praise and thanksgiving. She found true happiness in a life filled with gratitude.
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If you tried to summarize the entire Bible into one theme, what would that theme be? One answer to that question was proposed by the late rabbinical scholar Abraham Heschel. For Heschel, there was one dominant and prevailing theme that pervaded the entire TANAK or Old Testament. That theme was “God in search of humanity.”
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