Annunciation Quotes

I've written more about my parents than any writer in the history of the world, and I still return to their mysterious effigies as I try to figure out what it all means - some kind of annunciation or maybe even a summing-up They still exert immense control over me even though they've been dead for so long. But I can conjure up their images without exerting a thimbleful of effort. ~ Pat Conroy

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shuts in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb. ~ John Donne

Nostalgia is not indulgence. Nostalgia tells us we are in the presence of imminent revelation, about to break through the present structures held together by the way we have remembered: something we thought we understood but that we are now about to fully understand, something already lived but not fully lived, issuing not from our future but from something already experienced; something that was important, but something to which we did not grant importance enough, something now wanting to be lived again, at the depth to which it first invited us but which we originally refused. Nostalgia is not an immersion in the past, nostalgia is the first annunciation that the past as we know it is coming to an end. ~ David Whyte

When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and saw that in containing Him she contained the world besides. The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres, and the beginning and end of all things came before her in her deepest heart. And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm she slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence. And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence." -Thomas Merton ~ Thomas Merton

The soldier, above all other men, is required to perform the highest act of religious offering-sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death he discloses those divine attributes which his amke gave when he created in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instincts can take the place of the divine annunciation and spiritual gift which will alone sustain him. ~ Douglas MacArthur

Regardless of when Advent begins, every year the same Scripture readings are used for weekdays from December 17-24. The Gospels on those days describe events leading up to the birth of Christ: December 17: The genealogy of Jesus (Matthew) December 18: The annunciation to Joseph (Matthew) December 19: The annunciation to Zechariah (Luke) December 20: The annunciation to Mary (Luke) December 21: Mary's visit to Elizabeth (Luke) December 22: Mary's "Magnificat" (Luke) December 23: The birth of John the Baptist (Luke) December 24: The "Benedictus" of Zechariah (Luke) ~ Ken Untener

Like Mary, let us be full of zeal to go in haste to give Jesus to others. She was full of grace when, at the annunciation, she received Jesus. Like her, we too become full of grace every time we receive Holy Communion. It is the same Jesus whom she received and whom we receive at Mass. As soon as we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, let us go in haste to give Him to our sisters, to our poor, to the sick, to the dying, to the lepers, to the unwanted, and the unloved. By this we make Jesus present in the world today. ~ Mother Teresa

God has prepared for Himself one great song of praise throughout eternity, and those who enter the community of God join in this song. It is the song that the "morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy" at the creation of the world. (Job 38:7). It is the victory song of the children of Israel after passing through the Red Sea, the Magnificat of Mary after the annunciation, the song of Paul and Silas in the night of prison, the song of the singers on the sea of glass after their rescue, the "song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb" (Rev. 15:3) It is the song of the heavenly fellowship. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Analysis should release an experience that grips us or falls upon us as from above, an experience that has substance and body such as those things which occurred to the ancients. If I were going to symbolize it I would choose the Annunciation. - Seminar 1925 ~ C. G. Jung

Tradition holds that Mary was engrossed in reading at the moment the angel made his annunciation. Christ formally announced the opening of his ministry by laying hold of a book. The central epiphany of the Restoration was the result of the reading habits of a young teenager, and Joseph's nephew, Joseph F., followed that same tradition, sitting in his room on the eve of General Conference, reading and reflecting "until the eyes of [his] understanding were opened. ~ John R. Rosenberg