by James Martin
We pulled into the driveway, and a handsome four-story sandstone building loomed on our right. To our left was a white marble building, by all appearances brand-new, with a large fountain in front. I wondered what it was. Clearly that building was too elegant to be part of the Franciscan holdings. Stretching out before us, at the far end of the property, the Sea of Galilee sparkled.
When we emerged from the car, the heat hit me like an anvil. A very humid anvil. It must have been five thousand degrees. A sprightly woman in a white habit bounded down the stairs of the sandstone building.
“Bienvenue, mes pères!” she said with a smile. “I am Sister Télesfora,” the kind sister with whom I had corresponded. After a mercifully brief conversation in the stunning heat, we started to drag our bags toward the sandstone building.
“Oh no, Fathers,” she said. “You aren’t in this building.”
That’s the worst thing you can hear when visiting a religious community. The translation is: we don’t have room for you in the main house, so we’re going to put you somewhere far worse. As a novice working in Kingston, Jamaica, I had heard those words and was escorted to a room with a (functioning) wasps’ nest on the ceiling. During my time in East Africa I had heard those words on a visit to a religious community in northern Uganda and was led to a mud hut where fat bugs crashed angrily against my mosquito netting throughout the night. As a Jesuit who has taken a vow of poverty, one makes do, but one is also occasionally disappointed.
Sister Télesfora pointed across the driveway. “You’re staying there.” I peered at the glorious white edifice gleaming in the blinding sunlight.
“Really?” I said. “What is it?”
“Our new hotel,” she said with a smile. George looked at me, goggle-eyed. We lugged our suitcases past the fountain and into an air-conditioned lobby furnished with overstuffed white leather couches. From behind a luxe wooden desk, a woman purred, “Welcome. Your names?”
Surely this was a mistake. Weren’t we staying in a simple Franciscan hostel? But in a few seconds she handed us our card keys. As George and I wheeled our bags down the carpeted hallway, I almost laughed. When I saw my room I did laugh: two comfortable beds, a pristine bathroom, a TV, and, through the huge windows, a panoramic view of the Sea of Galilee.
After George and I compared rooms we met up with our host. “Sister,” I said. “These rooms are . . . incredible.”
“What did you expect?” she asked.
“Well, you’re Franciscans,” I said, “so I expected something . . . simpler.”
“Father, we are Franciscans,” she said. “Our guests are not!”
Later that afternoon, overwhelmed with emotion, I instinctively opened up the Gospels to the passage in Mark where Jesus had first called the fishermen along the shores of Galilee. “Follow me,” he said, and he said it right here. At that moment the Gospels felt more grounded, more tangible, more real than ever before. I looked out at the pale blue sea, barely able to believe what I was seeing.
A tiny red cupola in the distance looked familiar. Then I remembered it from the back cover of Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s The Holy Land. What was it? I fished my book out of my luggage. The caption read: “The Greek Orthodox Church at Capernahum, on the Sea of Galilee, with the Golan heights in the background.”
Capernaum! I’m not embarrassed to say that I wept upon realizing that I was looking at Jesus’s hometown, perhaps from one of the vantage points from which he once saw it. There it was, right on the water. Of course it would be by the shoreline—that’s why Peter the fisherman made his home there. Or rather, here.
Jesus was here, I kept thinking. Jesus was here.
THE DAILY BREAKFASTS AT the Franciscan hostel deserve comment. They were gargantuan. Each morning George and I walked from our hotel to the modest monastery building where the sisters and their staff covered two long tables with local delicacies: dates, figs, olives, fruits of all sorts, cereals for the Americans, yogurts, cheeses, toast, croissants, pastries, cookies, biscuits, coffees, teas, and juices, as well as meats, including a mysterious ham. Since there was no lunch, George and I consumed breakfasts meant to last us until dinner.
One day, we journeyed to Kursi, the traditional site of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac. In that story, Jesus drives a “legion” of demons from a possessed man into a nearby herd of pigs, which immediately rush into the sea and drown.1 Over breakfast the next day George said, “This ham is delicious. Do you think it’s from one of the Gerasene pigs?”
Today our destination, however, was Nazareth. Fortified with enough food for the rest of the day (if not the rest of the week), we took our supplies to the car: several bottles of water, our Avis map, the Murphy-O’Connor guidebook, smartphones, cameras, and a Bible. Back in the States, George and I had promised ourselves that we would begin each day with a prayer and a reading from Scripture that corresponded with our destination. Today we read the story of the Annunciation, Mary’s dramatic encounter with the Angel Gabriel, in our car, its air conditioner humming.
We had an easy time reaching Nazareth—just an hour or so from Capernaum. En route we passed a small sign for the town of Nain, where Jesus raised from the dead the only son of a widow from that town.2 It was harder to find our way to the center of Nazareth, as the signs dwindled inside the city limits. Also, any directional signs bearing pictograms of a church (a black triangle topped with a cross) were usually defaced with black spray paint.
In Jesus’s day Nazareth was a backwater town, with perhaps only two to four hundred residents, what one scholar called an “insignificant hamlet.”3 Its less than impressive status gave rise to the Apostle Nathanael’s sarcastic retort when he learned where the Messiah was from: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”4
But though the town is not mentioned in the Old Testament, it may have enjoyed something of a religious reputation in Jesus’s day. Some residents in Nazareth were “Nazoreans,” a clan who claimed to be descendants of King David. Some scholars surmise that both words come from the Hebrew netzer, meaning “shoot of.” Thus, the townsfolk may have considered themselves “offshoots of Jesse,” David’s father. Nazareth itself means “village of the shoot.”5 So it was an insignificant, even laughable, place to outsiders, but perhaps to those living there, a holy place, associated with the coming of the Messiah.
Today Nazareth is a bustling, hilly city. Homes and shops and churches and mosques are jammed next to one another, and small cars buzz through the narrow streets at alarming speeds.
Now populated by a mix of Muslims and Christians, the town is dominated by the gray cupola of the Basilica of the Annunciation, which stands atop a steep hill. Completed in 1969, the basilica is vast. Inside the upper church, a high ceiling is supported by crisscrossing concrete pillars; on the walls are colorful depictions of Mary donated by some two dozen nations, a testimony to the widespread appeal of Jesus’s mother. The current church is built on the ruins of several older churches, the most ancient dating from around the fourth century.
Today the lower church is centered on a small limestone grotto that was crowded with tourists on the day we visited. This is the Grotto of the Annunciation, the limestone cave where the Angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to Mary, to announce the birth of Jesus.
On a small altar in the grotto is a unique inscription to which Father Doan had alerted us before we left Jerusalem. It’s hard to see unless you look carefully, for the altar is behind an iron grille. Many artistic representations of the Annunciation include one of two phrases: either Ave Maria, “Hail, Mary,” from the angel’s first words to Mary in the Gospel of Luke, or Verbum caro factum est, “The Word was made flesh,” from John’s Gospel. Here at the site, however, the inscription reads: Verbum caro hic factum est, “The Word was made flesh here.”
I gripped the cold iron grille and prayed, wondering if the words to Mary, so familiar to Christians, were first uttered here. Or somewhere very near here.
Despite the important fact that
Jesus lived for some thirty years in Nazareth and is frequently referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth,” what is celebrated in the main church in Nazareth is not his young adulthood, or his career as a carpenter here, or even his later preaching in the town synagogue (something that would get him kicked out of town), but something else: his mother, and how she discovers that she will give birth.
Perhaps the people behind the naming of the basilica understood that as important as these other incidents in Jesus’s life were, something else was equally important: the strange circumstances of his birth. Our pilgrimage into the life of Jesus, then, begins with a look at his mother. And with the story of her encounter with the divine.
THE GOSPEL OF LUKE moves swiftly to introduce the protagonist of the story: Jesus of Nazareth. After a short prelude telling his readers that he plans to set forth an “orderly account” of the “events that have been fulfilled among us,” Luke begins his Gospel with the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist.
Zechariah is fulfilling his priestly duties in the Temple in Jerusalem when the Angel Gabriel appears to announce that his wife, Elizabeth, an elderly woman thought incapable of conceiving, will bear a son. The couple, says Gabriel, are to name the baby John.
Not surprisingly, Zechariah doubts. “How will I know that this is so?” For his doubting, he is struck dumb until the child is born. Elizabeth then remains “in seclusion” for five months.6
About a half a year later, something even more extraordinary happens. “In the sixth month,” Luke says, “the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.”
With that dramatic sentence Luke tells us not only that the angel (the Greek word is angelos, meaning “messenger”) was sent by God, but also that he was sent to a particular place. Luke is greatly concerned with history; his Gospel will pinpoint towns and cities and months and Jewish festivals and which rulers were in charge, to ground his account in time and place. For anyone who imagines God as far above something as banal as human history, here is God choosing a particular time (the sixth month), a particular location (Nazareth), and a particular person (Mary). Theologians call this the “scandal of particularity.”
The angel comes to a woman named Mary, who is betrothed to Joseph. Betrothal was a formal agreement to marry that lasted for a year. The woman involved was usually quite young, sometimes in her late teens.7 But it was a binding contract. Thus, Mary would have been seen for all practical purposes as Joseph’s wife.8 This is why, later on, when Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant, he would be well within his rights to divorce her. Luke also tells us that Joseph was of the line of David.
The angel’s words to the young woman may be the most famous greeting in the New Testament. Chaire, kecharitōmenē is the Greek,9 usually rendered “Hail, full of grace” or, in an unfortunate translation, “Greetings, favored one,” which sounds like the first words of an alien newly landed on earth. It may be impossible to replicate the beautiful alliteration of the Greek, but one reference book provides a lovely series of possible explanations of how the angel addresses Mary: “endowed with grace, dearly loved, endued with divine grace.”10 The tense used indicates that Mary has already been gifted. It is not the angel’s visit that confers grace; God has done this. Though Mary holds no great position like Zechariah, and though she is most likely poor, and though as an unmarried woman she occupies a lowly state in society, God loves her—lavishly.
Mary is the forerunner of all those in the Christian life who will be judged by human standards as unworthy of God’s grace. But God has other ideas.
“The Lord is with you,” the angel continues.
It is not surprising that Mary is surprised, utterly confused, or, in some translations, terrified. Encounters with the divine often engender fear. Sensing her reaction, the angel says, “Do not be afraid, Mary.”
The angel explains that she will bear a son. The boy will be called Jesus (Iēsous in Greek). The Hebrew name—Yeshua—was common at the time, a shortened form of Joshua (Yehoshua), the successor to Moses. The name means “God helps” or “God saves.”
In A Marginal Jew, his magisterial study of the historical Jesus, the Reverend John P. Meier, professor of New Testament at Notre Dame, notes that for most of the period covered by the Old Testament, Israelites were not named after the great patriarchs and matriarchs. But a century or two before Jesus, there came an upsurge in “native-religious” feeling in Palestine. That Jesus’s mother and her husband bear names from the Old Testament (Miriam and Joseph) may indicate that he was born into a family who participated in the desire for a reawakening, or reaffirmation, of Jewish identity under Roman rule.11
Mary’s child will be “Son of the Most High,” says the angel. (Later in Luke’s Gospel, a ranting demoniac will identify him with a similar title.12) He will inherit the throne of his ancestor David and will rule over the house of Jacob. “Of his kingdom,” Mary is told, “there will be no end.”
But the young woman is less concerned with what her son will do than with something more immediate: the pregnancy. So she asks the angel plainly, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
When Zechariah questions how the birth of his son would be accomplished, the angel offers an explanation but also strikes him dumb, as if punishing him for doubting. The angel treats Mary more gently, offering a mysterious explanation: the Holy Spirit will “overshadow” her. The angel again emphasizes the significance of her child: “He will be called Son of God.”
Then the angel further reassures her. If Mary questions, she can look to Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth, who is Mary’s cousin. “This is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren,” says the angel. (The reader already knows this.) Finally comes one of the clearest biblical affirmations of God’s power: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Mary decides. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” she says. The Greek word is doulē, or slave. “Let it be with me according to your word.” With that the angel leaves her.
THE STORY OF THE Annunciation never fails to move me. And for many years I wondered what drew me to this particular Gospel story. Is it the irruption of the extraordinary into an ordinary woman’s daily life? Is it how a single decision—Mary’s yes—changes history? Is it how God chooses the unlikeliest people to accomplish God’s desires for the world?
All of those things speak to me, as well as something more personal. For the more I reflect on this passage, the more the story appears to encapsulate the progress of a person’s relationship with God. What happens to Mary happens to us.
First of all, the initiative lies entirely with God. God begins the conversation with Mary, as God does with us, breaking into our lives in unexpected ways. We find ourselves touched by a Scripture reading, moved to tears by a friend’s comforting words during a confusing time, or befuddled by joy at a glimpse of autumn leaves shining in the late afternoon sun. And we think, Why am I feeling these feelings of longing, gratitude, wonder?
This is God beginning a conversation. And when we realize that this might be God’s voice, what happens? Sometimes we’re grateful. But just as often we’re fearful—like Mary.
Fear is a common reaction to the divine. When one realizes that it is God who might be drawing near, we instinctively withdraw. Thinking about the Creator of the Universe entering into the “particularity” of our lives can be terrifying. Sometimes on retreat, when I feel that I’ve suddenly received an answer to a long-standing problem or been given an insight that seems to have originated from outside me (as in “There’s no way I could have come up with that on my own”), I grow frightened or, as one translation describes Mary, “greatly disturbed.” God is paying attention to us. How could that not frighten?
We may also struggle with the notion of God’s paying attention to us in our littleness, in other words, “Who, me?” It may be hard for modern-day believers to appreciate this aspect of Mary’s life, particularly when conditioned by the kinds of images of Mary that decorate
the Basilica of the Annunciation—ten-foot-high mosaics of a strong, proud woman—but we must remember who Miriam of Nazareth was. First, she was a woman. Second, she was young. Third, she was most likely poor and living in an insignificant town. Finally, she was a Jew living in a land ultimately ruled by the Roman Empire. Taken together, Mary can be seen as a figure with little power. For a more contemporary image, think of God’s appearing to a young girl in a small village in Africa.
The angel gently counsels her to set this aside: “Do not be afraid, Mary.” Among the first words Mary hears are ones that her son will frequently use in his ministry, as when he walks on water in full view of the terrified disciples. Perhaps Mary shared her own experiences with Jesus. Why wouldn’t she? Who knows if Mary repeated the angel’s calming words to a frightened boy, a confused adolescent, or a worried adult: “Do not be afraid, Jesus.”
The angel then explains things for her. Again, as in our own lives. Take the example of a young person from an affluent background who hears a call to a different way of life. Naturally, it’s not as dramatic as Mary’s encounter, but it is an encounter with grace all the same. Imagine a college professor inviting you to consider working among the poor in the developing world. You’re initially stunned—“Me?”—but you also intuit a sense of God’s voice in the invitation. After the initial shock wears off, the professor describes what life overseas will be like. You’ll be living in a remote village; you’ll have to learn a new language; you’ll be separated from your friends and family; but your encounters with those living in poverty, she says, will transform you. This is what the angel does for Mary once she surmounts her alarm: he helps her discern.
At this point, along with Mary, you would probably ask, “How can this be?” This may be the facet of Mary’s life that intersects most with our own. We feel inadequate to what God seems to be asking—even if we are sure that it is God who is asking. This happens not only with an invitation to something wonderfully new and exciting, but also with a sudden turn of events that darkens life. An illness. The loss of a job. A ruptured friendship. Who hasn’t said, “How can this be?”