Reflection 

This is Mary’s story in an irreducible particularity and at the same time the story of each of us, of any of us, met with the perfect love of God in the midst of our fear, our struggle, our poverty and weakness, our insecurity and doubt and hearing the words: ‘The Lord is with you, do not be afraid’. And it is an opportunity for each of us to respond, to enter into that risk, that freedom, that openness; to say ‘yes’ to such a love. And this opportunity is gifted to us because the story is as much or more about God’s opening up to us as Mary’s opening up to God’s plan and salvation. Mary opens up and receives God-among-us, Emmanuel, but God in Christ is also opening up and welcoming human life and experience. At the root of the Annunciation is the new, radical, earthy manifestation of ‘The Lord is with you’. The God of the universe opens up entirely to us, entirely to the weakness and beauty of humanity—God in the womb, in the manger, who walks among our streets, holds little children, touches lepers, who dies in human flesh. There is no greater welcome, no wider openness, no fuller embrace, and no invitation more joyful than this.

Mary’s ‘yes’ is the vessel through which God-among-us steps into our world and opens up to us as one of us. Our ‘yes’ today is not a claim to perfection or a statement of moral superiority any more than the days we can only bring ourselves to say, ‘no, I just can’t’ mark us out as deficient or failures. The openness of God’s love is unending, so that wherever we find ourselves we are welcomed and embraced. So whatever these strained circumstances and whatever insecurity they may cause, ‘the Lord is with you, do not be afraid’.

https://www.merton.ox.ac.uk/socially-isolated-spiritually-connected/reflection-annunciation