Celtic Advent - Day XVI - November 30

 

Celtic Advent - Day XVI - November 30 

"Hail [Mary} full of grace, the Lord is with you . . . 

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 the Most 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 . . . 

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 also conceived a son; 

and this is the sixth month with her was called barren. 

For with God nothing will be impossible." 

(St. Gabriel the Archangel; Luke 1:28, 30, 35-37

Can we talk about Gabriel? 

I've been fascinated by him since I was a child and heard the story of the Annunciation as told by my grandmother. I have no idea where she got her ideas about him but she talked about him as if he were a member of the family. 

Perhaps she learned about him from her mother or her aunts. Perhaps it was from the nuns of her youth in the village. Perhaps it was her own imagination. But, she told the story as if it were taken straight out of her little black bible which was in her apron pocket when it was not on her nightstand. 

She said that Gabriel was among seven of the highly favored angels - which she called an 'archangel' - of God. Each of these angels had their own day: Michael (Sunday), Gabriel (Monday), Uriel (Tuesday), Raphael (Wednesday) Camael (Thursday), Jophiel (Friday) and Zadkiel (Saturday). 

Angels were very real to my grandmother. She talked to them all the time, depending on the day and what was going on in her life. Sometimes, she would wait until Wednesday to talk with Raphael about healing.  

There was an order to all things in heaven and earth and she meant to keep it. 

But, if a novena to a particular saint was not being answered in the way she had requested or thought it should, she would call upon Gabriel any day of the week because, she said, he was God's messenger. 

Gabriel, she said, would take messages TO God as well as give you messages FROM God. 

"Yes," she would say, "Gabriel came to Mary, just as he did to Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth would conceive a son and name him John, and just as he did centuries before and delivered a message from God to Daniel. But, with Mary, Gabriel also took Mary's answer to God. Mary said, "yes," and Gabriel took that answer back to God."

My grandmother had a deep devotion to Mary. I think the circumstances of her young life gave her a special affinity to the young girl from Bethlehem.  

My grandmother came to this country when she was 13 years old. It was the summer after her mother died and she came to Boston where some of her mother's relatives were living and working as domestics to the wealthy families on Beacon Hill. 

She was the youngest and the only girl of seven. After her mother died, she looked around and, she said, "saw my future - taking care of my father and my brothers."

She wept when she considered what lay before her and spent her nights on her knees, praying to Mary to help her find a way out of her dilemma. 

One night in her room, she saw a great light and, says, she knew immediately who it was. It was the Angel Gabriel, sent to her with a message from the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The path to her salvation was to convince her father that she was grieving - really, really grieving - for her mother, which wouldn't be hard, and that the best medicine for her was to spend some time with her mother's sisters and cousins in Boston. 

Just for the summer. That was the plan. And then, she would return. 

But, she never would. 

It was Gabriel, she said, who had brought her that dream. Of course it was, she said. She could never have imagined that herself, a young girl of 14 who had never even been outside her village. It was Mary who had heard her prayer and Gabriel who brought her the dream, just as he had done for Mary when she was but a young girl. 

She was convinced that an uncertain future in America was better than the one that certainly waited for her if she stayed in her village. And, with Mary and Gabriel on her side, she knew she could not fail. 

So, she told Gabriel to tell Mary 'yes'. Yes, she would do it. She would write to her aunts in Boston and ask them if  they would ask her father to let her stay with them. Just for the summer. She could even help them with their work as domestics. 

It would sound like the idea came from them. It was perfect. 

As I remember her story, my grandmother came over on a large cargo boat with a small bag of clothes which contained a change of clothes, her bible, and some pictures. She slug her beloved Portuguese guitarra over her back and she was off to her great adventure. 

My grandmother said that she spent most of her trip crossing the wild Atlantic ocean in her very small cabin way below deck with her bible and in constant communication with the angels and archangels who were sent by Mary to protect her. 

She said it was Gabriel who kept her company and sang with her as she played the songs of her youth on her guitarra. She said she never felt alone, never once felt afraid. "I had the best company heaven. Gabriel stayed with me the whole entire trip."

She kept Gabriel's words to Mary as her own: "For with God, nothing is impossible."

I have always been enchanted by my grandmother's story, her inspiration from Blessed Mary, and her relationship with Gabriel. 

I have always found Jan Richardson's poem about Gabriel equally compelling because it aligns so well with my grandmother's relationship with the Messenger Angel. 

Both women certainly present different images of Gabriel than what we've been taught in Sunday School or in sermons from the pulpit.

I offer Jan Richardson's poem to you for your meditation this evening. You might find this song, "Gabriel and Mary," by Garrison Doles, inspired by this poem, equally compelling. 

 Gabriel’s Annunciation

For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.

The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honor
upon a woman, and mortal.

Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her—
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me—
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so—
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.

I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.

Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
Do not be afraid
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me—
her first deliverance—
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction

for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time—
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest—
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
awful yes.

—Jan Richardson