Annunciation: How can this be?

Awesome homily from Deacon Greg on the Annunciation today. It's really from Advent in December but well worth a repeat performance today.

Gabriel comes to a virgin and tells her something stunning. She will bear a child. It is an event she never anticipated, one she never planned for. She’s practically a child herself, in a poor town, and she is being told that God wants her to play a critical role in salvation history. The angel makes clear: what is about to happen to her will change the world.

And in that moment, Mary utters her first words in the gospel…words that speak for all of humanity, in all our confusion:

“How can this be?”

She seeks an answer, an explanation, some plausible reason for something so implausible.

How many of us have asked the same question?

How often have we struggled to understand God’s plan in our lives?

How many of us have been blindsided by events we never expected – a twist on life’s path that we never saw coming, for better or for worse -- and asked ourselves, in fury or despair or bewilderment:

How can this be?

And here Mary is told, simply:

“Nothing is impossible with God.”