The icon above is specific to this unique week when we celebrate both the Feast of the Annunciation Friday and the Veneration of the Cross on Sunday. As you know, Pascha is a variable feast but the Annunciation is always on March 25th … 9 months before Nativity. So, this feast falls in a wide variety of places in our Lenten journey. Below is an extract from a homily entitled ’The Annunciation with the Cross’ that was delivered in the 1930’s by Father Sergius Bulgakov. I think he has some great insights for us to discuss in today’s class that capture the unique picture we have of both the Annunciation and the Cross this week.
The Annunciation is a direct testimony about God’s love for the world. Love is sacrificial by its very nature; the power of love is the measure of the sacrifice. God’s love is immeasurable and inexplicable in its sacrificial character, which partakes of the way of the cross. God who is in the Trinity renounces Himself from all eternity in the reciprocal love of the Three Hypostases; for ”God is love,” and ”the unfathomable divine power of the holy and glorious Cross” is the power of God’s life – of all conquering , immeasurable love in the depths of Holy Trinity itself. God-Love … the pre-eternal Love of the cross – raises a new cross for the sake of His love for creation. He gives the world a place of being alongside Himself; He renounces Himself for the sake of the world, voluntarily limiting Himself to allow creation in its limitedness to find itself in its slow and arduous development.
The world is created by the cross of God’s love. It is also saved by the cross, for, in its creaturely infirmity, the self-sufficient world contains the possibility of sin and of falling away from God, which is unrestrainable. Once it occurs, this falling away leads to the fatal disintegration of the world. In response to this possibility, God in His pre-eternal counsel already raises the cross of sacrificial love in the divine incarnation for the sake of the world: ”God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16). The Son is sent into the world in order to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29), in order to suffer out this sin unto the death on the Cross. And this pre-eternal counsel is accomplished by God’s love, by the power of the Cross. That which manifests the power of the Cross in the heavens is , on earth among the sons of me, the joy of the Annunciation; for there is no true joy without the Cross.
The Annunciation itself contains news of the Cross; and with a heavy cross upon the Most Pure Virgin, who now renounces all things that pertain to selfhood and entrusts herself to the power of the Lord. She accepts the sword that will pierce her heart. Her Son’s way of the cross is also her own. The joy of the Annunciation is accomplished through the cross and finds it foundation in the cross.
This week I’d like us to review two articles in some detail. I’ll print these articles out:
- Glorifying What Is Not Of This World – Sign of the Cross in our Hearts
- What does the Annunciation Teach Us About A Grateful Heart
Here are the other articles posted this week that may be very relevant to our discussions and our Lenten journey:
St John’s Adult Education 