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March 26, 2025Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord to the Virgin Mary through the angel Gabriel. We celebrate the moment where the Mother of God welcomes the will of God with loving and unconditional availability.
What is the meaning of this feast for us Christians, who are migrants, living in Arabia 2025 years after this announcement? In this jubilee year of the Lord 2025, we are invited to be pilgrims of hope, Mary presents herself to us as the mother on the journey, the one who accompanies us every day with her maternal and loving closeness.
Mary presents herself to us as the assurance of our hope in Christ. We cannot live without hope. Our condition as migrants makes us experience the instability of life. Everything is transitory. Therefore, we cannot fix our hope on things that pass and die. In order to live our condition as migrants, we must truly be pilgrims who fix their hope in God who has a human face, in the God who became flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
The passage of the annunciation that we heard is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for our lives. First of all, we contemplate an encounter that completely changes the life of Mary. She was betrothed to Joseph and was ready to form a new family with her husband from the house of David.
This encounter manifests God's predilection for this singular and unique human being. Thus begins a new journey for this young woman. Mary was chosen and elected to be the mother of God. For this reason, the angel Gabriel addresses her with a singular greeting: “full of grace”, filled with the favor and predilection of God. She has always been chosen to be the mother of God: the eternal Word of God in her becomes man, takes on our human nature to bring into our human nature wounded by sin, the great hope, the love of God that saves.
Mary is the assurance of our hope because she is the first to place her total trust in the action of God. From the dialogue with the angel, we can see the awareness of her humility as a creature. How is it possible that I can become a mother, mother of the Son of the Most High? I do not know a man. Mary is assured by the angel; she will conceive by the work of the Holy Spirit. The action of God in her will be decisive. Her hope is not placed in herself, but in the action of God. That is why, she can say to the angel: “here I am, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word”. Mary is the assurance of our hope because she knows that nothing is impossible for God.
In this way the prophecy announced by Isaiah is fulfilled in her, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son. This is the sign for us: a virgin conceives the son of God who in her womb becomes the son of man. This son, Jesus, is our hope; Christ is the hope that does not disappoint; he is the love of God from whom no one can separate us; he, the son of the virgin Mary, is the face of God's mercy that makes us new creatures and through forgiveness allows us to always start over again and experience the gift of a new beginning.
The Virgin Mary is the assurance of our hope in Christ because of her total obedience to the will of God. As the letter to the Hebrews tell us, our sacrifices do not save us. The offering pleasing to God is to do God's will and not our own. Mary is the woman of hope because she is the woman with “Yes” to God's will. Through her total availability, God himself has placed his dwelling among us.
If Mary is the assurance of our hope, let us never neglect to pray for her intercession. Every day let us turn to her asking her to help us to entrust ourselves totally to Christ, our reliable hope, and do God's will every day.
To you, as migrants and pilgrims of hope, I make this proposal. As you know, in our spiritual tradition there is a prayer that celebrates today's feast in a particular way, it is the Angelus prayer, in which the dialogue between the Virgin Mary and the angel Gabriel is remembered. I invite you to pray this short prayer every day, even three times a day, that will remind you the mystery of the annunciation, the mystery of our hope in the God who has a human face, that is Jesus. Recite this prayer faithfully, either alone or with the family, especially at the beginning of each day. The constant memory of the annunciation of the Lord will make our hope more secure and our day joyful even in the midst of fatigue.
Finally, I am very happy to install the new extraordinary ministers for Holy Communion in this celebration who will be at the service of this parish of Saint Joseph. Their ministry can find great inspiration in the solemnity that we celebrate today. The Virgin Mary, from the day of Annunciation, carried within her womb, the body of Christ. The extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist too, like Mary, are the bearers of Christ, they offer Christ to others as the Virgin Mary did. I express my deep gratitude for their availability to this ministry, at the service of the Christian community.
May Mary, Mother of God and Mother of Hope, accompany us on our pilgrimage towards Easter and towards the kingdom of God. Amen