As we contemplate the world around us, a question may arise: if God is the Designer of the whole universe, why did He not make it more perfect? How much more beautiful would be a creation without faults or defects: precious stones exposed to the light of the sun and not hidden under the earth, trees ready to bow down before people to offer them their delicious fruit, animals of paradisiacal colours entirely obedient to the human will, men more virtuous than those with whom we live…
Nevertheless, theology tells us that God always does what is most perfect. And St. Thomas Aquinas explains that, despite these shortcomings, creation could not be more excellent as a whole: “The universe, the present creation being supposed, cannot be better, on account of the most beautiful order given to things by God; in which the good of the universe consists. For if any one thing were bettered, the proportion of order would be destroyed; as if one string were stretched more than it ought to be, the melody of the harp would be destroyed.”1
An apparent “stain” on creation
However irrefutable this truth may be, a stain appears in the history of creation that is disagreeable to our eyes, even more so if we consider its consequences: original sin.
In the beginning, God placed human beings in Paradise, where everything was more beautiful, more harmonious, in a word, more perfect. However, our first parents deserved to be expelled from there for disobedience and, until today, their descendants suffer the effects of that transgression. The Creator wanted to establish humanity in Eden, but by its own fault it cast itself into exile.
Thus, the fault of the first couple would represent a disproportionate and continuous “dissonance” in the great harp of history. God, in His infinite justice, was as it were “obliged” to uphold Adam and Eve’s banishment, which accordingly became an indelible memorial of His first “defeat”…
Now, to suppose such a thing could constitute a blasphemy! God can never be the eternal defeated one! Such a title is Satan’s exclusive domain.
So what did the Most High do to reverse this situation?
God makes use of the same weapons as the Serpent
St. John Chrysostom says: “Christ overcame the devil by using the means by which the devil had triumphed, and he defeated him by taking the very weapons he had used. The virgin, the wood and death were the signs of our defeat. The virgin was Eve, for she had not yet known man; the wood was the tree; death, Adam’s punishment. But now the virgin, the wood and death, once the signs of our defeat, have become the signs of our victory. Instead of Eve, there is Mary; instead of the tree of good and evil, there is the wood of the Cross; instead of Adam’s death, there is the death of Christ.”2
Of these three weapons, Mary Most Holy stands out in a certain way. God wanted her to cooperate in bringing about the Incarnation. Now, if there were no Incarnation, there would be no Redemption. Therefore, to repeat the trilogy of St. John Chrysostom, without the Virgin there would be neither the wood nor death.
Let us turn, then, to that most powerful weapon, which God used to avenge original sin.
The New Eve
“The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Gn 3:20). Mother, it is true, but who begot the living according to nature and the dead according to grace.3 Thus the first Eve did not correspond faithfully to the meaning of her name, introducing death on the earth. However, the second restored this design, begetting those alive to grace.4 Our Lady can therefore rightly be called the New Eve.
From the time of the Patristics, the Church has seen in the figure of Mary a profound link with that of Eve: “As death entered through a woman, so it was fitting that life should also return through a Woman. One, seduced by the devil through the Serpent, made man taste death; the other, instructed by God through the Angel, gave birth to the Author of salvation,”5 says St. Bede.
Two angelic spirits communicate with two virgins: the first one causes the expulsion of man from Terrestrial Paradise; the second generates the One who will open the doors of the heavenly Paradise to humanity. What correspondence and what antagonism in these two conversations, which have determined, each in its own way, the destinies of humanity!
Let us consider some aspects of this parallel between the Archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to the Virgin Mary and the Serpent’s dialogue with Eve in the Garden of Eden.
“Hail, full of grace”
St. Luke’s account of the Annunciation begins with the well-known angelic salutation: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with You!” (1:28). These short words, piously repeated down the centuries, have become the inspiration of musicians and artists, the delight of Angels and the terror of the infernal regions; yet when heard by the most humble Virgin, they were the cause of consternation: “What unheard-of praise is this?”
The holy perturbation of Mary, who conferred in her Heart the most profound meaning of that greeting, is contrasted with the fact that Eve easily believed the deceitful words of the Serpent, and did not ask for Adam for help or an explanation.6
The Angel continued: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God” (Lk 1:30). She who did not think herself worthy to be the slave of the Messiah’s mother was, in reality, the only creature who had pleased Him.
Two promises
After the greeting, the Archangel Gabriel told Her the object of his mission: “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” (Lk 1:31-33). What a promise!
The serpent had also made a promise to Eve: “your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil” (Gn 3:5).
Two gifts are announced, both very attractive. One is deceitful and deceptive: to be like gods. The other, sublime, true and ultimately far superior: to beget God Himself! After all, what does the vague proposal to be like a god mean in comparison with the possibility of embracing in one’s womb the One who contains the whole universe within Himself?
Faced with this, there are differing reactions. The first Eve was dazzled by the pleasant aspect of the fruit of the tree (cf. Gn 3:6) and wanted to eat it, even though this constituted a transgression of the divine command. Mary, thinking of the obedience to her vow of virginity, asked: “How shall this be done, because I know not man?” (Lk 1:34).
St. Gabriel must have been amazed at the lofty degree of purity – the angelic virtue – that Mary possessed.
The shadow of the Paraclete
“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” (Lk 1:35).
While Eve sought in the darkness of sin the light to know good and evil, Mary, wishing to obscure her person, allowed herself to be covered by the shadow of the Divine Paraclete, drawing to herself the Spirit of God – also called Most Blessed Light – and receiving His seven gifts.
At the Annunciation “the cunning of the Serpent was overcome by the simplicity of the dove.”7 The flight of the dove triumphed over the slithering of the Serpent. God in human form would be born of Our Lady without the help of a man, to restore harmony to the human race.8
An entirely divine radiance shines on creation
As a consequence of the first sin, God punished Adam by cursing the ground: “cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you” (Gn 3:17). In Mary, the “blessed and priestly ground,” Jesus “drove out the thorns and thistles. He dwelt in her womb and purified it; He sanctified the place from the pains of childbirth and maledictions.”9
“Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum”: with this response to the Archangel’s announcement, the divinity sought by Eve in disobedience came to dwell in Mary through submission. If in Paradise on earth man wanted to be god out of pride, from all eternity God wanted to become man because He was humility in essence.
“Through her willingness and obedience, it was the Virgin Mary who introduced into the heart of the divine work the supreme creature and archetypical model for everything that exists, from whom everything flows.”10 Beginning with Our Lady’s holy conversation with St. Gabriel, “creation began to shine with an entirely divine brilliance, through the merits of Mary Most Holy.”11
Mary’s “fiat” determined the final crushing of the ancient Serpent and his frustrated attempts at victory. Thus the prophecy was fulfilled: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gn 3:15 DR).
Adapting the metaphor of St. Thomas used at the beginning of this article, if creation were a musical composition we would say that Eve’s dialogue signified a dissonance, resolved through the harmonious chord of the Annunciation.
If we omit this wonderful fact, past history, and even the future, looks like the crooked lines on which God writes; but when we consider it, we see the harmonious and rectilinear homage paid to the Creator and Redeemer through creation. ◊
Sense of Hierarchy and Exaltation of Virginity
From the sublime event of the Annunciation, we may deduce two perfections of the spirit of St. Gabriel, which in my view are clearly portrayed in Fra Angelico’s paintings depicting the scene of the Annunciation.
First of all, a remarkable sense of hierarchy.
When St. Gabriel spoke to Our Lady, She was not yet the Mother of God. She became so the moment She accepted his communication and, as a consequence, the miraculous and fruitful intervention of the Holy Spirit. Since Angels are by nature superior to men, up until the very instant when the Virgin pronounced her “fiat”, St. Gabriel was addressing someone inferior to himself, although he was inviting Her to be his Queen.
On the other hand, the message he brought signified such a predilection for Our Lady on God’s part that it placed Her above any other Angel, however high the latter’s rank, including St. Gabriel. Hence the unique sense of hierarchy that we see him manifest, and which Fra Angelico expresses in an incomparable manner in his frescoes: it is the Angel imbued with a deep respect and profound veneration for Our Lady, as one who takes the superiority of his own nature and subdues it, in view of the grandeur of Mary’s mission. In her turn, Our Lady also inclines herself and replies to the Angel with all deference, because She was receiving God’s message and because, as a human creature, She was inferior to the Angel.
The episode has the perfume of a world of mutual respect, of reciprocal superiority, in which Our Lady ends up being incomparably greater than the Angel, indicating well the sense of hierarchy included in this act. And, it must be stressed, a sense of hierarchy and discipline opposed to the non serviam of Satan.
To this lofty sense of hierarchy we can add another aspect: a kind of celestial chastity. In addressing the Virgin of virgins to announce that She would be Mother without ceasing to be a virgin, St. Gabriel makes a splendid exaltation of virginity, as well as revealing a kind of masterpiece of purity accomplished by God: before this immense fact of the Incarnation, Our Lord decided to violate all the rules of nature to save the perfect virginity of Our Lady. And He conferred a new glory on the human race, making Her the Spouse of the Divine Holy Spirit and Mother of a Son miraculously begotten without the collaboration of man.
St. Gabriel was thus charged with bringing to earth the message which is one of the greatest glorifications of chastity ever known in history. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the special connection with the virtue of purity that this Archangel had to have.
A sense of hierarchy, discipline, humility, and a link with purity and virginity, these are the virtues of the divine ambassador, contrary to the pride and “sensuality” of the devil, the irreconcilable enemy of God and of Our Lady. The old Serpent was trampled underfoot and crushed in an overwhelming manner in this sublime mystery of the Christian Faith. And if Fra Angelico had added to his painting the detail of the devil’s head beneath the feet of St. Gabriel, he would have portrayed a profoundly authentic fact. ◊
CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio.
O Arcanjo da Anunciação [The Archangel of the Annunciation.].
In: Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Year VI.
N.60. (Mar., 2003), p.18-19
Notes
1 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiæ. I, q.25, a.6, ad 3.
2 ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. De cœmeterio et de cruce, n.2: PG 49, 396.
3 Cf. PETER CHRYSOLOGUS. Sermón 140. In: JUST, Arthur A. (Org.). La Biblia comentada por los Padres de la Iglesia. Madrid: Ciudad Nueva, 2006, v.III, p.57.
4 Cf. BLESSED GUERRIC ABBOT. In Assumptione Beatæ Mariæ. Sermo I, n.2: PL 185, 188.
5 ST. BEDE. Homilías sobre los Evangelios, 1, 3. In: JUST, op. cit., p.57.
6 Cf. CLÁ DIAS, EP, João Scognamiglio. Maria Santíssima! O Paraíso de Deus revelado aos homens. São Paulo: Arautos do Evangelho, 2020, v.II, p.232-233.
7 ST. IRENAEUS OF LYON. Contra las herejías, 5, 19, 1. In: JUST, op. cit., p.63.
8 Cf. ANONYMOUS. Himno sobre la Anunciación. In: JUST, op. cit., p.59.
9 ST. EPHREM OF NISIBIS. Comentario al Diatessaron, 1, 25. In: JUST, op. cit., p.61.
10 CLÁ DIAS, EP, João Scognamiglio. Can Mary Re-establish the Order of the Universe? In: New Insights on the Gospels. Città del Vaticano-Nobleton: LEV; Heralds of the Gospel, 2013, v.VII, p.69.
11 Idem, ibidem.
