Freedom to Choose Love
Sermon preached by Christina Palis on Sunday, March 23, 2025
Christ is in our midst!
As we journey through this Lent and Antiochian Women’s Month, we have heard about core aspects of our practice of faith - fasting and forgiveness, charity, and prayer. I am grateful and honored to be speaking today about the beautiful feast of the Annunciation which we will celebrate this coming Tuesday. I will focus particularly on Mary’s freedom of choice and response to the angel Gabriel and what it tells us about doubt, curiosity, and engagement in loving relationship. On this third Sunday of Great Lent today, we are also celebrating the Veneration of the Holy Cross, receiving an invitation - just as Mary did - to take up our cross and follow Christ.
The account of the Annunciation is found in the Gospel of Luke and is a familiar story to us, so much so that we may need a reminder to be present to its profound nature. Mary had been raised in the Temple and is at this time perhaps just fifteen years old. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary with this glorious greeting, "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you! Blessed are you among women!"
Mary’s initial, and understandable reaction is confusion and fear - as we hear she was “troubled” at Gabriel’s words. Gabriel reassures Mary, though, “Do not be afraid, 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 forever; and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
Can you imagine this moment hearing such words? Trying to make sense of such an awe-inspiring invitation? Mary does not blindly accept this but engages Gabriel in conversation, asking,“How can this be?” While this exchange is brief in Luke’s Gospel account, we see the dialogue between Mary and Gabriel fleshed out in the moving Akathist hymn that we pray on Fridays throughout Lent. In the first stanza we hear - “To my soul thy strange message seems hard to grasp; how speakest thou of a virgin conception. Craving to know knowledge unknowable, the Virgin cried out unto him who ministered unto her: From a maiden body, how may a Son be born; tell thou me!”
We see here doubt, engagement, questioning, curiosity. Mary does not immediately accept what Gabriel is saying - confusing, contradictory, and overwhelming as it is - but asks to understand more. Mary here is a model for us of deep engagement with our spiritual life - grasping for more understanding, more knowledge. We realize that doubt, questions, and curiosity are not antithetical to faith, but rather a crucial part of it. Our relationship with God is dynamic, personal, intimate - how better do we deepen our relationship with others than by asking questions, seeking to learn, embodying curiosity? As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware offers in his sermon on the Annunciation, “What we see in [Mary] is not passivity but engagement, not subordination but partnership, not submission but mutuality of relationship.”
It can feel frightening and vulnerable to confront the uncertainties, questions, contradictions, and concerns that we experience in our spiritual lives and in our relationship with God. We may feel the urge to either blindly accept or reject completely. But what if we embraced Mary’s curious stance as we face our faith and God? If we asked questions like - “How can this be” that we can practice selfless love, humility and compassion in a time of such division? “How can this be” that we can find strength amidst loss and grief? “How can this be” that we can maintain our faith when we face such suffering?
In this Gospel passage, Gabriel concludes his conversation with Mary with the words - “For with God nothing will be impossible” - a deep reminder of the mystery that we embrace as Orthodox Christians in our faith journeys. Mary is a beautiful embodiment of this mystery - virgin and mother, with her human body made “more spacious than the heavens.” The icon of the Annunciation is traditionally found on the Holy Doors that open to the altar, leading us into the ultimate mystery of the Eucharist. A stance of curiosity and openness allows us to move deeper into the experience of Mystery. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware says, “Faith is not shutting ourselves off from the unknown but advancing boldly to meet it.”
Mary’s response to Gabriel is simple yet profound - “Let it be to me according to your word.” We have to remember that this was not pre-ordained or coerced. Mary had a choice. We have seen that Mary had doubts and questions about this remarkable invitation, and she ultimately says“yes” to God. We must truly hold how significant this choice is as Mary opens herself physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Mary is the model here of what it means to be a human person, created in the image and likeness of God and endowed with freedom. This freedom was given to us by God and is the basis for our ability to love God and others.
I know that love and freedom can feel like big, big concepts. But let’s look at how they are beautifully intertwined. Love - selfless Christ-like love - can only exist where there is freedom. Love is not compelled, demanded, or taken - not filled with expectations or demands. God has made us free, in His image, so that we may use our will to choose the way of light, of goodness, of compassion. The way not just of loving those who love us, but choosing to love and pray for those who do not.
I know that it is so challenging to choose this way of love in our relationships with others but we have a model in Christ who offers love ceaselessly to us without expectation. And we have a model in the Theotokos who used her freedom to choose the path of manifesting God’s person and love in this world. St. Nicholas Kavasilas writing in the 14th century reminds us, “The Incarnation of the Word was not only the work of Father, Son, and Spirit—the first consenting, the second descending, the third overshadowing—but it was also the work of the will and the faith of the Virgin.” We have the same opportunity to participate actively in the Incarnation.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Cross. It is the midpoint of Lent and Jesus reminds us, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” We face collective and individual crosses each day - suffering around us and suffering within us. Mary again offers us an example for this. She takes up the cross of bearing a child outside of biological and societal norms. And she sees her child die before her, as foreshadowed in the prophecy of the Elder Simeon, “And a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” Mary’s choice in freedom and in love was sacrificial, ultimately allowing the joy of the Resurrection.
We are also offered “annunciations” each and every day, opportunities to grapple with our faith and ultimately say yes to bearing Christ into this world, to manifesting His great love to others. As we continue our Lenten journey, let us hold the Theotokos as an example and embrace these invitations with intention and courage. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.