Well, we’re rounding the turn into the final stretch of Advent.
Today is Annunciation Sunday, the night we light the fourth candle in the
wreath and consider what it might have been like for a very young woman in
Nazareth to be paid a visit by one of God’s biggest guns, the Archangel
Gabriel.
Gabriel was one of the guardians of Israel. In the Old Testament,
he appeared to Daniel, to interpret his visions. He also was sent (as recounted
in the Book of Ezekiel) to destroy Jerusalem. In the New Testament, he appeared
to Zacharias, to tell him that his wife Elisabeth would bear a child (John the
Baptist). Elisabeth being Mary’s cousin, I suppose it’s possible she’d heard
about Gabriel’s visit, so maybe she wasn’t completely laid out by having an archangel
show up in her room and telling her that she’d been chosen to bear the son of
God. Without any kind of sexual activity.
Well, maybe, but I think it must still have been quite the BFD back
in those days, in the backwater of civilization, and it must have been overwhelming.
“Gabriel’s Message” is a Basque carol that’s based on a 13th
Century Latin carol. I’m giving you Sting’s take on it.
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