Sally Read - Annunciation: A Call to Faith in a Broken World

Annunciation

SALLY READ

A Call to Faith
in a Broken World

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from Revised Standard Version of the BibleSecond Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition). Copyright 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Cover art:
Annunciation of Cortona
Fra Angelico (14331434)
Museo Diocesano, Cortona, Italy
Yorck Project, Wikimedia Commons

Cover design by Riz Boncan Marsella

2019 by Ignatius Press
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-62164-068-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64229-084-4 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number 2019931774
Printed in the United States of America

How God comes to us; knowing Mary; the veil and the merciful gift of prayer; the Eucharist as our Annunciation: a new way of being with God; how you are longing for him and he for you; don't mistake a man for God; the importance of knowing God's eyes on you; Mary's experience, and my experience, are yours.

How anxiety shackles us; how faith keeps us whole; we are God's familybut don't be overfamiliar; the importance of intimacy and awe; how God transforms our suffering: he is the ultimate artist, and he completes everything we have the courage to begin; becoming the double-hearted Christian; how you need to give up your misery and how the Mass helps you to do it.

Who am I? Being known and being named; the mortification of the stranger; knowing that our identity is in God; knowing who Mary is helps you know who you are; how God chooses to need youthe importance of touch.

The fiat of motherhood and every vocation; the importance of nourishing the city of God within us; the necessity of silence; learning his word; how his language forms us; suffering with Christ; how the sacraments shape and support our lives.

Being (happily) wounded by God and by man; when prayers seem to go unanswered; when prayer seems impossible; choosing the path of life; another reason for the Masshow God wants you.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you! But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of theMost High;
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of his kingdom there will be no end.

And Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I have no husband? And the angel said to her,
The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be called holy,
the Son of God.

And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has alsoconceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who wascalled barren. For with God nothing will be impossible. And Marysaid, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to meaccording to your word. And the angel departed from her.(Luke 1:2638)

Thanks are due, as always, to those who support me and advise me in my writingparticularly my husband Fabio, Tim Bete, Marie Cabaud Meaney, and Father Paul Murray. I also very much appreciate the work of all the team at Ignatius Press.

As I am poet-in-residence of the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs, my writing is always watched and prayed over by Father Gregory Hrynkiw. For that I am eternally grateful.

And thank you to Flo, for listening.

I don't know if I believe in God.

So said my daughter two days before her First Communion. The lacy dress was bought, the prayers learned; cousins were arriving by plane and train with envelopes of money. Her friends were lisping prayers for world peace and anticipating new iPhones, bouncy castles, and parties for a hundred.

I want the party more than Communion. Maybe I shouldn't do it, she said.

Her first statement was literalshe thought she might believe in God, but how could she know? She felt nothing in prayer. The Mass was long and boring, and she didn't see why we had to go. I was a sad inquisitor in the lamplight by her bedtiredly torn, like the mother of the bride when the cake has been iced and the feet have turned cold. When pressed she wouldn't say that she didn't believe in Jesus' life, death, and Resurrection; nor would she deny his divinity. I felt the surge of what the world would tell me I should say in the face of her uncertainty, and I said it:

Don't do it. Wait a bit. Do it when you're grown up if you like.

Immediately I saw her disappointment in me. Would I let her slip away so easily? In her face I saw the panic of being let go alone, godless, in the streets outside. Simultaneously, there was a strong pain in my chest.

The thing is, if you don't receive Communion on Sunday, Jesus will be very sad.

(As I said those words I heard, again, the voice of the world: Manipulation! Sentiment! Blackmail!)

He wants you, particularly you. He doesn't need you to know he exists in a clever way. He doesn't need you to hear his voice or see angels. What he's asking you to do is to open a door so that he can reach you better. Do you think that you could just open the door?

It was six years since my own conversion. God came to me when my daughter was three, and almost overnight I changed the nursery narrative from There is no God to He is here and I know him. I didn't make many concessions to her age when discussing these things with her: she was in her stride analyzing the nature of the Trinity (was it, she suggested, like a knife, a fork, and a spoon, each with a different function?); she welcomed a more theological take on angels and chose a Byzantine icon for her room, despite the bewildered shop assistant telling her that the cartoon cherub with blond curls was more in keeping for a little girl.

Often she would interrupt my thoughts with a question specificallyrelevant to what I was thinking. There is a candid photographof the two of us arranging flower petals on the street for Corpus Christi the June before I became Catholic. We are both gazing at the petals in our hands with the same serious expression.

But the onrush of God into our lives did not shift us geographically or away from people we still held dear. Despite the fact that Flo knew the Creed in English and Italian by the age of five, I think that Catholicism will always seem fresh to her. She is what Caryll Houselander called a rocking-horse Catholica young child who converts because of a parent's conversion. Both my daughter and I are in that borderland where we can rock back and forth and easily see both worlds: new Catholic friends and old atheist ones. For all our new faith we are still close to people for whom going to church is simply an odd thing to do. We know many couples who see marriage as irrelevantapart from our gay friends, ironically. None of my daughter's school friends, despite living so close to Rome, go to Mass with their families on Sundays. But she sees that I go every day. It is living in this between-space that is one of the causes of her questions.

It is also a loaded blessing having me for a mother. Little of the detail of my conversion was translated into Italian, and much was distorted on the grapevine. Your mother saw God, a classmate told my daughter one day when she was ten. After I had explained that this was