The Sweetest Fruit

The Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Fr Lawrence Lew preaches on the many graces of today’s Solemnity.

It’s that time of year for admiring the spring blossom again, and on one such occasion a  friend told me that in his homeland the popular Hungarian name for today’s feast is Gyümölcsoltás, which is the word for the horticultural practice of grafting fruit. In the farmers’ almanac, at this time of year, the Hungarian fruit farmers would graft their plants, combining the desirable characteristics of particular fruit trees to an existing root stock. According to the Royal Horticultural Society, ‘the purpose of grafting is to combine one plant’s qualities of flowering or fruiting with the roots of another that offers vigour and resilience.’ The result is a stronger, more fruitful, more beautiful, and revitalised plant. And this is a most beautiful analogy of what God is doing for Mankind by becoming Man; a rich image of the significance of the Lord’s Annunciation that we celebrate today.

For in the Blessed Virgin Mary, we have the fairest of women, the singularly most beautiful blossom of the human race. Transformed and prepared by God’s grace, Mary bears the virtues of pre-eminent humility, chastity, purity, obedience, devotion to God, and faith, which are summed up in her response to Gabriel’s message: ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord: let what you have said be done to me’ (Lk 1:38). Thus a 15th-century English carol declares: ‘There is no rose of such virtue as is the rose that bare Jesu’. And also in Our Lady we have, too, the most splendid fruiting imaginable for our human race. For combined with her enclosed virginal purity is the miraculous opening of her womb, and she bears Jesus: truly, ‘blessed is the fruit of your womb.’ Thus, Mary is the flowering and fruiting plant, having in herself, by God’s grace, the most desirable characteristics that render her fruitful and responsive to God’s Word.

As we celebrate today the Incarnation of Christ, and thus we commemorate Mary becoming miraculously pregnant with the Son of God, we might think that at the angel’s Annunciation, Christ is being grafted to Mary; the Son to the Mother. But this isn’t quite accurate.

For just as the fruiting and flowering plant is grafted to the venerable root stock which gives resilience and vigour to the flowering plant, so it is not Jesus that is grafted to Mary but rather, it is Mary, in all her sinless humanity, that has been, as it were, grafted to Jesus, who is our God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. For it is Christ’s divine nature, now united in Mary’s womb to our human nature – a nature that Jesus Christ receives from Mary – that invigorates and renews our humanity. Because of this miraculous grafting of Christ’s divinity to our humanity, the whole of the human race is strengthened and given new life, indeed, we are given the vigour of divine life itself. For, in Christ and with Christ and through Christ, we are united to God by sanctifying grace such that we receive life, virtue, and sanctification from Christ. Hence the Lord says in St John’s Gospel: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing’ (Jn 15:5).

There is a beautiful antiphon that we Dominicans sing during Lent that declares: ‘Holy is God; Holy and Strong; Holy Immortal One’. Therefore, today’s feast celebrates Mankind’s grafting to the Immortal One, so that we, who are united to Jesus through the Sacraments of his Holy Church, can, with his holiness, be resilient and withstand the assaults of sin and temptation, and with his strength can be strong to survive every mortal threat including sorrow, sickness, and even death itself.

Moreover, from the Cross, Jesus gave Mary to his beloved disciple, and so Mary is also our mother. Hence, in our union with Christ, we have God for our Father through the grace of divine adoption by Baptism, and we also have Mary for our Mother so that, as we draw life and strength from God – as we are filled with the grace of Christ – so we shall also flower in virtue and be fruitful in good works like our Blessed Mother.

The 15th-century carol I referred to calls this work of grace a res miranda, a marvellous thing, that heaven and earth should be contained in Mary’s womb, the human and the divine grafted together in Christ. Henceforth, we may rejoice and enjoy today some respite from our Lenten austerities, for because of this day, humanity no longer tastes  only the bitterness of Adam’s sin and death but rather we are invited to taste the sweet holiness and vigour of Christ, the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb, and indeed ultimately to feast at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14, 8:10c | Hebrews 10:4-10 | Luke 1:26-38

Image courtesy of the author.