“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Lk 1, 26

Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke

During that time,
the angel Gabriel was sent by God
in a city of Galilee called Nazareth,
to a young virgin,
given in marriage to a man of the house of David,
called Joseph;
and the girl’s name was Mary.
The angel came to her and said:
“I greet you, Filled-with-grace,
the Lord is with you. »
At this word, she was completely overwhelmed,
and she wondered what this greeting could mean.
The angel then said to him:
“Don’t be afraid, Mary,
for you have found favor with God.
Behold, you will conceive and bear a son;
you will give him the name of Jesus.
It will be big
he will be called Son of the Most High;
the Lord God
give him the throne of David his father;
he will reign forever over the house of Jacob,
and his reign will never end. »
Mary says to the angel:
“How is this going to be,
since I don’t know a man? »
The angel replied:
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High
will take you under its shade;
therefore the one to be born will be holy,
he will be called Son of God.
Now behold, in her old age, Elizabeth, your relative,
also conceived a son
and is in its sixth month,
when she was called the barren woman.
Because nothing is impossible with God. »
Mary then says:
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord;
let everything be done to me according to your word. »

So the angel left her.

Source: AELF

Meditation Father Bernard Devert

“Do not be afraid, you who have the favor of God”; At these words, Marie was quite troubled, wondering what this greeting could possibly mean.

Listening to the Word will lead Mary to pronounce this yes, luck for the whole human community.

The angel left her; absolute trust was established between the messenger of God and Mary who never shied away from her commitments, accepting to live ‘shifted’ to refuse any alignment with the ideas of power and the illusions that are the shields of the rich.

The annunciation is revealed as the enunciation of a birth from which we are all called to be born in order to recognize what we are, children of the Father.

Mary’s yes is a seed for the future. When men and women are the actors, then hope cracks our tombs: life is where we did not experience it, where we no longer hoped for it.

Mary does not keep this message to herself, she shares it in the heart of a silence, the very one that allows us to hear this magnificent news: “do not be afraid, you have found favor with God”.

Often, we are surprised by Marie’s discretion, or even by her absence, except in the most decisive and dramatic hours that her son experienced.

Marie’s vocation is less to speak than to allow the voiceless to express themselves. Let us not be surprised if so many poor devote great devotion to Mary. They found favor with God, their commitment proving to be a treasure for the Church. When the voice of the poor is heard, then that of God is heard.

Perhaps at the heart of this annunciation, we can remember Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz who was president of ATD Fourth World:

“The day when the Assemblies, the Universities, the Courts, the Companies, the Unions, the Associations will mobilize to hear the voice of those who have not yet acquired the means of public speech and social participation, the day when they will take into account their knowledge, their thinking of their human rights, the day when they will readjust accordingly the decisions, analyses, judgments, activities, solidarity that they are responsible for assuming in society… only then will we have won a decisive battle for true citizenship.

Giving birth to listening to this yes so that the poor may be heard for having found grace – would this not already be the recognition of an eternity begun to discover that all, born of the love of God, all of us, we are called to find grace.