The Holy Mother and the Dying Son
Prayers for when the Annunciation kisses Good Friday
Nine months before Christmas, the church year celebrates the feast of Our Blessed Mother’s “yes!” to God. We call this: The Annunciation.
“The Annunciation” refers to the portion of Luke 1 where the Angel Gabriel visits Mary. (We have titles for these scenes because the Bible was not written in chapter and verse — chapters came along in the 12th century, and verses in the 16th century, so people needed story reference shorthands.)
But the Annunciation is not just a story, it is an event! And a Feast! A time particularly set aside to cherish and celebrate that Mary indeed said yes to God even knowing she did not know all that would come.1
But, my God, does this feel sinister, despairing even, when the Annunciation this year, Monday, March 25th, falls on Holy Monday. The second day of Holy Week. The week we keep time with Jesus in the events of his death — his passion and resurrection.
While it is more customary to transfer the Feast of the Annunciation to Eastertide (fairly: to give this day its joyous due) and certainly, this is not going to be the full Feast, I am intrigued to honor this story in Holy Week.2
I am compelled to hold Mary’s wild joy with the terrible foreboding of the cross.
Because that just feels true of so much of motherhood.
The joy of life, the certainty of death.
I’ve said before: you have to be kind of nuts to bring a baby into this world. For all the usual reasons: they are expensive, life-changing, unpredictable. But also because you make life knowing life ends. I reflected on this all the time in the deep throes of my postpartum “blues” that felt more like postpartum deep-ocean-despondency.
I had brought into this world my own undoing. My child was - is - so small in such a big, big world.
No parent is unaware of the threat of death. We are consumed by its reality. It’s why there is such a profitable industry telling us how to be the best parents: because if we can control how we gentle parent or blend our own baby food, maybe we can death-proof our child’s life. For a time.
Mary’s joy, her singing of God lifting up the lowly and tearing the mighty off of their thrones, of filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty — this deserves its own battle cry. Its own gloriously crowned day of joy.
But Mary, Our Lady, also is the one who has comforted so many of us in the tender silences when death kisses the joys of early pregnancy. Of longing to be a mother.
The tension of Annunciation on Holy Monday invites us to reflect on where God might be in fertility yearning and grief. Where God might be in miscarriage — so often so silent, so private in toilet cubicles and hotel rooms and on hospital floors.
The tension of Annunciation on Holy Monday invites us to reflect on where God might be in stillbirth.
Where God might be in being “one and done” … but that not being the original plan.
So for us at my church, Jubilee Episcopal Church here in NW Austin/Cedar Park, Texas, we are going to make some holy room for this joy and pain, for this delight and the longing, on March 25th.
I need it, myself, for my own griefs.
To hold space for Good Friday in its fullness, when Jesus will say to his mother: behold your Son.
And I need it to know fully what I means for Mary when she will be there to greet her Son on Easter morning.
In case you want to hold this space too, here are the prayers I have written (adapting some from Enriching our Worship 5)
Prayers for Annunciation on Holy Monday:
Fertility and Pregnancy and Parenthood Loss and Longing
The Prayer Leader says: The book of Isaiah says: “as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” We turn to you now, O God, for comfort, solace, and care.
God who sees, we pray for all unseen grief, for silent loss and quiet, fragile hope.
We know that what we have grieved in private
You have borne witness to in fullness.
Comfort us in our yearning, our weeping, and our resignation.
God, in Your mercy: Hear our prayer.
Grieving Mother, comfort us as we grieve the loss of children who never were born.
Comfort us for the children born sleeping already in Your tender arms.
Comfort us as we grieve the children we longed to have, but never came to be.
Comfort us in infertility, in unspoken hopes, and in tender dreams.
We know the children we mourn are not lost to You;
and to each of us, bring healing and grace.
God, in Your mercy: Hear our prayer.
Giver of Joy: we sometimes struggle to permit our own needs,
our own wants, and our own desire.
We need grace for feelings of joy in the midst of loss,
for feelings of anger and jealousy in the midst of joy,
for feelings of lament in the midst of questions.
We need grace for when we feel nothing at all.
Give us the grace we know is there for us,
and remind us that even Your mother suffered and loved,
grieved and envied, and she can walk alongside us in these times.
God, in Your mercy: Hear our prayer.
Infant in the Manger: we pray for the children in our lives;
Steep us in wisdom as we lead them,
Hold us in tenderness when they weary us,
and thank You for the ways they teach us to draw close to You.
God, in Your mercy: Hear our prayer.
Tender Parent: we pray for our caregivers,
for the people who have wiped our tears and born our grief,
we thank You for the people who loved us well,
we grieve the relationships that did not love us well,
and we ask Your mercy be a shield about our joy.
We trust that Your love is the gentle current that tugs us along when we feel we cannot move one more step,
and we know Yours is the voice that whispers:
we are enough, we are loved, we are whole
where our love is insufficient, where our lives have holes,
I am with you, always.
God, in Your mercy: Hear our prayer.
Or at least, if we’re being technical, to have a midweek Eucharist with readings appropriate for this day as it kisses Lent and Annunciation together.