The Annunciation

Lady Day; The Annunciation of the Lord; Evangelismos

March 25; moved out of Holy Week and Easter Week in the Western churches

An anonymous work on the date of Easter argues that Christ’s coming and His death must have fallen on the day of Adam’s creation and fall, in the spring. It is an early source for the opinion that the Incarnation took place on March 25, the day many in the church held to be the day of Christ’s death. This is a calculation by an anonymous writer, not a record of anyone keeping a feast.

Its page on the feast says the Annunciation was already celebrated in the 4th century, and points to a 2nd-century painting of the scene in the catacomb of Priscilla at Rome. A painting of the scene does not prove a feast, and the research behind this page found no 4th-century record that names the feast. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that at the Synod of Laodicea in 372 it was not known.

In On the Trinity IV he records the belief that Christ was conceived on March 25, the day He suffered, and compares the Virgin’s womb to the new tomb in which He was laid. The same calculation puts His birth nine months later, on December 25. It is a belief about a date, not a feast.

For He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered

The Catholic Encyclopedia says a homily of his seems to mention a feast of the Lord’s taking on human nature, which would put the feast earlier. It adds that the homily may not be genuine, or that its words may mean Christmas. It cannot be the first record of the Annunciation.

Speaks of the feast of the Annunciation as one celebrated everywhere in the Catholic church. It is the first sure record of the feast, more than 600 years after the church began. The same council fixed the feast for Spain on December 18, out of Lent, against those who wanted Rome’s March 25: the churches did not yet agree on the day. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that it was not known at the Synod of Laodicea in 372. In the West the feast first appears in the Gelasian Sacramentary, which survives in a 7th-century manuscript; scholars divide on whether Rome adopted it in the 7th century (Duchesne) or in the time of Gelasius, died 496 (Probst).

Its fifty-second canon makes the Annunciation an exception to the Lenten rule that the Liturgy of the Presanctified is said on every day of the fast. The council, like Toledo, treats the feast as already universal.

On all days of the holy fast of Lent, except on the Sabbath, the Lord's day and the holy day of the Annunciation, the Liturgy of the Presanctified is to be said.

The saying of three Hail Marys at the evening bell, which was becoming general in Europe, is recommended and indulgenced by John XXII in 1318 and 1327. This is the root of the Angelus.

Gives the Hail Mary its complete form. The first half joins the words of Gabriel (Luke 1:28) and of Elizabeth (Luke 1:42); the Catholic Encyclopedia finds little or no trace of the prayer as an accepted formula before about 1050. The closing petition, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,” is said by the Catechism of the Council of Trent to have been framed by the Church itself.

The appendix to its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says no day but the Lord’s Day is commanded to be kept holy under the gospel, and that festival days are not to be continued. Days of public fasting or thanksgiving may still be called for special occasions. Strict Presbyterians who hold the regulative principle keep no Annunciation.

Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.

Parliament ends the English custom of beginning the legal year on March 25, Lady Day, the feast of the Annunciation, and from 1752 the year begins on January 1. The Act gives as its reason that the old count differed from neighboring nations and from Scotland, and caused mistakes in the dates of deeds. The same Act brought in the Gregorian calendar and dropped eleven days in September 1752.

the legal supputation of the year of our Lord in England, according to which the year beginneth on the twenty-fifth day of March, hath been found by experience to be attended with divers inconveniences

Greece keeps March 25 as Independence Day, and the popular story, repeated by Britannica, has Germanos, bishop of Patras, raise the flag of revolt over the monastery of Agia Lavra on that day. Historians treat the scene as a legend, and the day the revolt broke out is disputed. Britannica notes that the holiday falls on the Orthodox feast of the Annunciation.

The date comes from a calculation, not a record. Many Christians of the 3rd and 4th centuries held that Christ died on March 25, and some reasoned that He was also conceived on that day (H1, H3). Nine months after March 25 is December 25. This is why the Annunciation and Christmas stand nine months apart. The feast itself is much later than the calculation. It was not known at Laodicea in 372, and it is first attested as universal in the 7th century (H5, H6).

Historians divide on whether Christmas was set for December 25 by this calculation, or set against the Roman sun festival with the Annunciation then counted back from it. Either way, the date comes from the church’s reckoning and not from the text.

The calculation theory (Duchesne, Talley)

The history-of-religions theory

Roman Catholics

Eastern Orthodox churches

Anglicans

Lutherans

The Armenian Apostolic Church

Baptist, Pentecostal, evangelical and Reformed churches

The Churches of Christ

Strict confessional Presbyterians

A solemnity in Lent

Catholics keep the Annunciation as a solemnity even in Lent. The Orthodox serve a full Divine Liturgy for it, even on a Lenten weekday and even on Good Friday, and by the Council in Trullo it is excepted from the rule of the Presanctified (H6).

Moving the feast

Under the 1969 General Norms the Catholic Church moves it from a Lenten Sunday to the next day, and out of Holy Week to the Monday after the Second Sunday of Easter. Anglicans and Lutherans also move it out of Holy Week and Easter Week. The Orthodox never move it.

The Angelus

A Catholic devotion said at morning, noon and evening at the sound of a bell: three versicles on the Annunciation, three Hail Marys and a prayer. The evening form is from the 13th and 14th centuries (H7) and the versicles first appear in 1560.

The Hail Mary

Its first part is the greeting of Gabriel and Elizabeth in Luke 1:28 and 1:42, and its closing petition, asking Mary to pray for us, was added by the Church (H8). Catholics and the Orthodox honor Mary’s consent as part of redemption; Lutherans and Anglicans keep the day chiefly as the incarnation.

Lady Day as the start of the year

Because the English year began on March 25 until 1752 (H10), employment contracts, rents and other dealings were reckoned from Lady Day.

Lady Day as a quarter day

The first of the English quarter days, when rents fell due, and many leases still run from it. The tax year also began on Lady Day; carried forward past the days dropped from the calendar, it still begins on April 6 in the United Kingdom.

Greek Independence Day

A national holiday in Greece on March 25, with school flag parades and an armed forces parade in Athens. The day joins the nation’s revolt to the feast, and the flag-raising story behind it is a legend (H11).

The church’s appointed remembrance is weekly, and it looks to the cross

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper that proclaims His death (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord Himself gave the memorial: “this do in remembrance of me,” and Paul says what it proclaims, “the Lord’s death till he come” (S2). That is the remembrance God appointed, on the day the apostles kept it. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly feast to its worship.

The New Testament shows no church keeping the Annunciation, and the record bears that out: the first sure sign of the feast comes more than 600 years after the church began (H5), and the date rests on a calculation (H1, H3).

Luke tells the annunciation in full and gives it no date and no feast

The event is Scripture, with Gabriel’s words and Mary’s answer; no text gives it a day or commands us to keep it (S3).

Luke tells that the angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin in Nazareth, named Mary, with the news that she would bear a son and call his name Jesus, the Son of the Most High, and that she answered in faith (S3). The event is plainly biblical, and it is the beginning of the gospel story. The church rightly preaches it.

But Luke gives no date, not even a season, and no apostle tells the church to remember the day each year. The date of March 25 came from later calculation (H1, H3). Preaching the annunciation is given; a feast of it in the church’s worship is not.

Scripture honors Mary as blessed and as a believer, and says no more

Elizabeth calls Mary blessed for her faith, and Mary says all generations will; Scripture honors her and gives no prayer to her (S4).

Elizabeth says to Mary, “Blessed art thou among women,” and “blessed is she that believed” (S4), and Mary herself says that all generations will call her blessed. The church should do so. Gabriel’s word to her in Luke 1:28 is translated “highly favored” in the American Standard Version; Catholic translations, following the Latin, render it full of grace. Either way the text praises her faith and obedience.

The text gives no command, no example and no promise for prayer to Mary. The first half of the Hail Mary is Scripture’s greeting, but its petition was framed by the Church and made official in 1568 (H8). Honoring Mary is given; praying to her is not found in the text. The verdict above judges that teaching, and the Marian Feasts page weighs it in full.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves one believer free to regard a day and another free not to, and forbids each to judge the other (S5, S6).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S5). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian feast. It does give the rule for a Christian’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord, and no one may judge him for it.

So a Christian may read Luke 1 on March 25 and thank God at home for the incarnation, or enjoy the day as a national holiday. What they may not do is make that day binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy day (A1). Paul’s word to the Colossians stands beside this: let no man judge you “in respect of a feast day” (S6).

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years.” The Annunciation is such a day, kept by the calendar.

The Galatians were taking up a calendar as a way to stand right with God (verses 4:21 and 5:4), and Paul fears his labor was in vain. Read in context, the text strikes at any day made necessary to please God, and it fits a feast imposed on the church as a duty. Scholars differ over whether the days were Jewish or pagan. The text does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S5). The case against the Annunciation in the church’s worship rests on the New Testament pattern (A1).

There is one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus. Asking Mary to “pray for us” in the Hail Mary and the Angelus takes from His sole mediation.

Paul names the one mediator, the man Christ Jesus “who gave himself a ransom for all” (verse 6): He stands between God and men by His sacrifice. Asking another to pray for us does not by itself claim that office; Paul asks the brethren to pray for him (1 Thessalonians 5:25), and Catholic teachers say Mary’s prayer is of that kind. So the verse alone does not settle the question. The objection stands on two firmer steps. Scripture directs prayer to God through Christ, and gives no command, example or promise of praying to anyone who has died: asking a living brother is talk between Christians, but a petition said to Mary in heaven is devotion addressed to her. And prayer is an act of worship, which needs the authority of the text. The Hail Mary’s petition was framed by the Church long after the apostles (H8).

Jesus turns praise of His mother toward obedience: “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” It is a check on Marian devotion.

Jesus does not deny that Mary was blessed; Elizabeth and Mary say it too (S4). He shows where the blessing finally rests: on hearing and keeping God’s word, which Mary did (S3). It rebukes a devotion that stops at Mary’s person, but it is no case against the annunciation itself, nor against honoring her faith.

Jesus forbids “vain repetitions.” The repeated Hail Marys of the Angelus are such.

The text does not condemn repetition as such: Jesus Himself prayed the same words a second and third time in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:44). It condemns empty heaping up of words, as the nations do who think they will be heard for their much speaking. Whether a person says the Angelus with a mind on the Annunciation or says it by rote is for them and God. The objection to the Angelus rests on the address to Mary (S8), not on the repetition.

Mary herself said that all generations would call her blessed. The church honors her each year at the Annunciation, as she foretold.

The church does call her blessed, and should: as the mother of the Lord and a woman of faith (A3). Her song is Scripture, and may be sung on any Lord’s Day. But it foretells the church’s honor and does not appoint a feast. It praises “God my Saviour” (v. 47) and the Lord’s regard for “the low estate of his handmaid.” That honors Mary without a prayer to her.

The Annunciation frames the day as the fulfillment of the prophecy that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, which Matthew applies to Christ.

The prophecy is Scripture, and Matthew applies it to the birth of Christ (Matthew 1:23). A church may read and preach it on any Lord’s Day. The text tells what God promised; it does not appoint a day on which to rehearse it.

Study

• Luke tells the annunciation, and Matthew tells Joseph’s side. Why might a story be Scripture and still not call for a yearly feast?
• The date of March 25 comes from a calculation about the day Christ died (H1, H3). What does it mean for a feast that its date was reasoned out and not given?
• Elizabeth and Mary call Mary blessed (Luke 1:42-48). Where does honoring a person end and a prayer to them begin, according to the text?
• Matthew 6:7 forbids vain repetition. Does repeating a prayer make it vain, and what does the verse say makes it so?
• Romans 14:5 says “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.” How can a family keep March 25 at home without making it a law for the church?

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