Advent: An Ignatian Contemplation on the Annunciation

In the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius proposes a unique way to reflect on the story of the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth to the Virgin Mary in Nazareth. He proposes 3 simultaneous scenes to ponder:

1.      Imagine yourself in the presence of the three Persons of the Trinity: God the Creator, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, as they lovingly look upon the world. Envision within your heart God’s great love and compassion for all. Image this love as it moves slowly, tenderly over the darkness of the world and its people.

  2.     See the struggle that exists among people, the compulsive aimlessness of human abuse and killing. See the addiction, the pain, the poverty and the despair of so many men and women. See the injustice of some world leaders as they manipulate wealth and resources for power. [See the earth itself crying out to God as it suffers so badly because of mistreatment and neglect.]  Within this vision are all the people of the earth: men, women children and all the colors and shades of humanity. Some are disabled, crippled.  Some are strong and whole. Some are newborn, while others are old and diminishing. See them all … those filled with tears and sorrow, those overjoyed with happiness, and others experiencing deep loss and total alienation.

 3.     See this love ignite the force of God’s powerful Spirit as God resolves to enter into the human story in a definitive way. It is time, time for God to act, to rescue us from blindness and self-destruction, to bring us to fulfillment. God’s saving plan, secret and mysterious, is about to be brought forth. Stay with this vision; and with the Trinity observe the angel Gabriel as he approaches Mary. With God, await her response.

This is the marriage of heaven and earth. The loving Spirit of God becomes one with all that is weighed down by its own materiality. God come to us and unites himself to us in redeeming love.

[the Father speaks]

“My Son, I wish to give you a Bride who will love you. Because of you she will deserve to share our company, and eat at our table, the same bread I eat, that she may know the good I have in such a son; and rejoice with me in your grace and fullness.”

“Now, you see Son, that your Bride was made in your image, and so far as she is like you she will suit you well; yet she is different in her flesh, which your simple being does not have.”

[the Son replies]

“My will is yours, and my glory is that your will be mine… I will go and seek my Bride and take upon myself her weariness and labors in which she suffers so; and that she may have life, I will die for her, and lifting her up out of that deep, I will restore her to you.”

Taken from the Romances of John of the Cross on the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel.