Match Made in Heaven

Appreciating the Annunciation in our own lives

03/25/2019

Luke 1:26-38 The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you." But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end." But Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?" And the angel said to her in reply, "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.

In the church business, we use a catchy little saying to capture the three peak points of pastoral care. It is: “hatch, match and dispatch.” Hatch refers to birth or baptism, match means marriage, and dispatch is death or funerals. Now, sadly, for some Catholics these are not only the peak points of their faith life, they are practically the only points because those are the only times they come to church. I only see some of our parishioners at baptisms, marriages and funerals. I do not mean to suggest they are not spiritual people or that they do not pray in their own way, but only that their sacramental life is somewhat shallow.

These three peak points also provide us with the proper ordering of natural life. First, we’re born, then we get married (you get married), and finally we die. In fact, this is how I remember how long my parents have been married. I take the age of my older brother, and add one year. My brother is two years older than me, so he’s fifty-two, plus one makes fifty-three. So, this year my parents are celebrating their fifty-third wedding anniversary. I don’t know why it works out that way; it’s just weird how it does. I say that with great compassion to those couples who have trouble conceiving a child or those children born out of wedlock. Nevertheless, the natural order of life is hatch, match and dispatch; birth, marriage and death.

On March 25 we celebrate the Annunciation, the day the Archangel Gabriel “announced” (annunciation) that Mary would conceive a Son who would save his people from their sins. Jesus himself, however, would not observe this natural or normal order of hatch, match and dispatch. Indeed, he had come to radically change that order. In other words, the apostles could not take Jesus’ age, add one, and figure out how long Mary and Joseph had been married. Why?  Well, because Jesus had been conceived before they were married in order to highlight that the Holy Spirit was operative and the Child would be the Son of God, not the son of Joseph.

Furthermore, Jesus’ own life would follow a different pattern: not hatch, match and dispatch, but rather, hatch, dispatch and then match. What do I mean? Well, most people believe that Jesus never got married, the match part. But that’s not true. Our Lord’s marriage would take place in heaven, the original “match made in heaven.” We read in Revelation 19:9, “Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Jesus’ marriage takes place in heaven, and his Bride is the Church, you and me. That is, if we make it to heaven. In other words, Jesus has scrambled the natural order of earthly life and rearranged it according to the supernatural order of heavenly life, where the end is marriage not death, a match made in heaven, not the darkness of death. The Annunciation is what started the ball of the hatch, match and dispatch rolling in an entirely new direction.

My friends, the Annunciation has radical implications not only for Jesus’ life, but also for each of our own lives. That is, we should stop seeing our lives only in the order of birth, marriage and death. Rather, for a Christian, the order is almost the opposite, first death, then birth, and finally marriage. How so? We do not experience real living until after we die. Our earthly experiences are but a prelude to the symphony of eternity. That is why every funeral liturgy is filled with signs of baptism: the holy water, the pall (the white cloth covering the casket), and the Easter Candle. For a Christian, just like baptism is a spiritual death, so natural death becomes a supernatural birth. And once you get the dispatch and hatch parts out of the way, all that’s left is the match made in heaven, “the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

In Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquy, he juggles these three peak points of life, the hatch, match and dispatch. Hamlet wonders: “To die, to sleep - / No more – and by sleep to say we end / The heartache and the thousand natural shocks / that flesh is heir to – ‘tis a consummation / Devoutly to be wished!” In other words, what waits for us after death is not the grave, but glory, a glorious wedding and the eternal consummation. And that is not shallow sacramentality.

Praised be Jesus Christ!