Annunciation: A Call to Faith in a Broken World

By Sally Read

Sally Read converted from atheism to Catholicism when her daughter, Flo, was only four years old, but it did not take long for the child to become aware that many friends and relatives did not share her mother's newfound faith. This consciousness of "two worlds" led to a great many doubts in Flo, and some rebellion. Two nights before her First Communion she suddenly questioned whether she should receive the Eucharist.

Sensing the precarious nature of faith in an overwhelmingly secular world, Read began writing down the compelling reasons for holding on to both God and Church. Taking the Annunciation as her template, she explored common experiences of the spiritual life as she meditated on each part of the story recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

Drawing on Scripture, the saints, and the lives of people she has known personally or professionally as a nurse, Read shows how God is with us always—even in suffering, spiritual dryness, and depression. Although inspired by a mother's loving response to a daughter, this book will speak to any believer engaged in the bliss and the bewilderment of a relationship with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Aug 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642290844

Book preview

Annunciation

SALLY READ

Annunciation

A Call to Faith

in a Broken World

IGNATIUS PRESS    SAN FRANCISCO

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition). Copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Cover art:

Annunciation of Cortona

Fra Angelico (1433–1434)

Museo Diocesano, Cortona, Italy

Yorck Project, Wikimedia Commons

Cover design by Riz Boncan Marsella

©2019 by Ignatius Press

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-62164-068-4 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64229-084-4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number 2019931774

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Why?

1.  And he came to her (Luke 1:28)

How God comes to us; knowing Mary; the veil and the merciful gift of prayer; the Eucharist as our Annunciation: a new way of being with God; how you are longing for him and he for you; don't mistake a man for God; the importance of knowing God's eyes on you; Mary's experience, and my experience, are yours.

2.  Do not be afraid (Luke 1:30)

How anxiety shackles us; how faith keeps us whole; we are God's family—but don't be overfamiliar; the importance of intimacy and awe; how God transforms our suffering: he is the ultimate artist, and he completes everything we have the courage to begin; becoming the double-hearted Christian; how you need to give up your misery and how the Mass helps you to do it.

3.  Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord (Luke 1:38)

Who am I? Being known and being named; the mortification of the stranger; knowing that our identity is in God; knowing who Mary is helps you know who you are; how God chooses to need you—the importance of touch.

4.  Let it be to me according to your word (Luke 1:38)

The fiat of motherhood and every vocation; the importance of nourishing the city of God within us; the necessity of silence; learning his word; how his language forms us; suffering with Christ; how the sacraments shape and support our lives.

5.  And the angel departed from her (Luke 1:38)

Being (happily) wounded by God and by man; when prayers seem to go unanswered; when prayer seems impossible; choosing the path of life; another reason for the Mass—how God wants you.

Works Mentioned

NOTES

More from Ignatius Press

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you! But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "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."

And Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I have no husband? And the angel said to her,

"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 who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible. And Mary said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:26–38)

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due, as always, to those who support me and advise me in my writing—particularly my husband Fabio, Tim Bete, Marie Cabaud Meaney, and Father Paul Murray. I also very much appreciate the work of all the team at Ignatius Press.

As I am poet-in-residence of the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs, my writing is always watched and prayed over by Father Gregory Hrynkiw. For that I am eternally grateful.

And thank you to Flo, for listening.

Introduction

Why?

I don't know if I believe in God.

So said my daughter two days before her First Communion. The lacy dress was bought, the prayers learned; cousins were arriving by plane and train with envelopes of money. Her friends were lisping prayers for world peace and anticipating new iPhones, bouncy castles, and parties for a hundred.

I want the party more than Communion. Maybe I shouldn't do it, she said.

Her first statement was literal—she thought she might believe in God, but how could she know? She felt nothing in prayer. The Mass was long and boring, and she didn't see why we had to go. I was a sad inquisitor in the lamplight by her bed—tiredly torn, like the mother of the bride when the cake has been iced and the feet have turned cold. When pressed she wouldn't say that she didn't believe in Jesus' life, death, and Resurrection; nor would she deny his divinity. I felt the surge of what the world would tell me I should say in the face of her uncertainty, and I said it:

Don't do it. Wait a bit. Do it when you're grown up if you like.

Immediately I saw her disappointment in me. Would I let her slip away so easily? In her face I saw the panic of being let go alone, godless, in the streets outside. Simultaneously, there was a strong pain in my chest.

The thing is, if you don't receive Communion on Sunday, Jesus will be very sad.

(As I said those words I heard, again, the voice of the world: Manipulation! Sentiment! Blackmail!)

"He wants you, particularly you. He doesn't need you to know he exists in a clever way. He doesn't need you to hear his voice or see angels. What he's asking you to do is to open a door so that he can reach you better. Do you think that you could just open the door?"

It was six years since my own conversion. God came to me when my daughter was three, and almost overnight I changed the nursery narrative from There is no God to He is here and I know him. I didn't make many concessions to her age when discussing these things with her: she was in her stride analyzing the nature of the Trinity (was it, she suggested, like a knife, a fork, and a spoon, each with a different function?); she welcomed a more theological take on angels and chose a Byzantine icon for her room, despite the bewildered shop assistant telling her that the cartoon cherub with blond curls was more in keeping for a little girl.

Often she would interrupt my thoughts with a question specifically relevant to what I was thinking. There is a candid photograph of the two of us arranging flower petals on the street for Corpus Christi the June before I became Catholic. We are both gazing at the petals in our hands with the same serious expression.

But the onrush of God into our lives did not shift us geographically or away from people we still held dear. Despite the fact that Flo knew the Creed in English and Italian by the age of five, I think that Catholicism will always seem fresh to her. She is what Caryll Houselander called a rocking-horse Catholic—a young child who converts because of a parent's conversion. Both my daughter and I are in that borderland where we can rock back and forth and easily see both worlds: new Catholic friends and old atheist ones. For all our new faith we are still close to people for whom going to church is simply an odd thing to do. We know many couples who see marriage as irrelevant—apart from our gay friends, ironically. None of my daughter's school friends, despite living so close to Rome, go to Mass with their families on Sundays. But she sees that I go every day. It is living in this between-space that is one of the causes of her questions.

It is also a loaded blessing having me for a mother. Little of the detail of my conversion was translated into Italian, and much was distorted on the grapevine. Your mother saw God, a classmate told my daughter one day when she was ten. After I had explained that this was not the case and carefully laid out a more accurate version of events, she asked the inevitable question: Why don't I feel anything during prayer?

Like other rocking-horse Catholics, Flo is acutely aware of both the shining gift of faith and the why of going to Mass, the question not the answer—"Why do I have to go?" It may seem as though Flo became Catholic at a young age (indeed, she was baptized Catholic, to conform with societal norms, and was only four when she began going to Mass), but those earliest years of nonbelief and nonpractice are crucial to a child's development. The faith had not been transmitted to her in utero with language and love, as I have seen happen in cradle-Catholic families. She had not experienced every Sunday of her life in church from the very beginning. She knows it wasn't always like that (and besides, Dad gets to stay at home). Those four short years of not going to Mass were enough to make Sunday attendance seem an imposition, something extra we picked up along the way—unlike the brushing of teeth or bedtime reading, which at least held good through sheer, unquestioning routine.

But though my daughter's questions and sometime reluctance have been unsettling, I have come to see their genius. This borderland of doubt and dissatisfaction, need and longing is, I believe,