The Annunciation

∼ Words from the Church Fathers ∼

‘For with God nothing shall be impossible’ (Lk. 1:37).

And God said: ‘Let there be light’, and there was light; until God spoke the word there was no light. Neither could anyone conceive of the nature of light until God spoke and light came to be. In the same way, when God spoke, the water and the dry land came into being, and the starry vault, the plants and the animals, and finally man. Until God spoke, there was nothing of all this, neither could anyone except God know what might exist. By the power of His word, God created all that was created in heaven and on earth. Whatever God wished to be and called into being, that had to be, and it was impossible for it not to be, because the word of God is irresistible and creative. The creation of the world is a great miracle wrought by the divine word.

Having created all things, God also established by His word the order and manner of existence of all things and their behaviour and relationship one with another. And this order and manner of existence which God has established is a great miracle of the divine word.

But, as well as this order and manner of existence among created things, visible and comprehensible to us, there is an order and manner of existence unseen and incomprehensible. From this invisible and incomprehensible order and manner of existence, which is a mystery hidden in the Holy Trinity, there have occurred, and continue to occur, phenomena which people call miracles. One such phenomenon was the conception of our Lord Jesus Christ in the womb of the most holy Virgin Mary, who had not known a man. This seems to be an interruption of the visible and comprehensible order and manner of existence, but it is not at all a strange event for the invisible and incomprehensible world. This birth is indeed a great wonder; perhaps no greater wonder has ever been revealed to us mortals. But the entire created world is itself a miracle, and the entire visible and comprehensible order of things is a miracle, and just as this miracle came to be by the word of God, so in the same fashion the Lord took human form in a virgin’s womb. Both the one and the other took place by the power of the word of God.

Therefore the wondrous Gabriel replied to the Virgin’s question (a question asked by all generations: ‘How can this be?’): ‘With God nothing that He says shall be impossible.’

Amen.