The announcement to Mary that she is to be the mother of the Son of God has been the subject of many paintings. Of course, Mary is there, as well as the angel Gabriel who brings the message and a perhaps surprising dove. Mary is surprised that she is to be the mother because she is a virgin, but Gabriel tells her that the Holy Spirit will bring this about. That explains the dove, which is often used as a symbol for the Spirit. The Holy Trinity — Father, Son and Spirit — are at work here to bring about the salvation and renewal of the world.
The Annunciation — or Announcement, to use the more familiar English word — is described in only one of our Gospels, that of Luke. It’s the announcement to Mary that she is to be the mother of the Son of God. This is a well-known scene because many artists have tried to picture it, and thousands of those paintings can be found online — just google “annunciation pictures.” (It should go without saying that such a painting may not be historically accurate!) In many of them the angel Gabriel can be identified easily by the wings — though there’s no mention of that feature in our text. Gabriel is simply a messenger (which is what the word “angel” means), though obviously a very high-level courier who understands the importance of this mission.
Another figure in the paintings is Mary, who is going to receive the message. In most of the pictures she looks as though she may be in her mid to late 20s, and she’s often shown in an attitude of prayer. In fact, in some paintings she’s kneeling at a prayer desk with her devotional book of hours open. But while many of the artists who painted those pictures were highly skilled and appreciated the religious significance of the event, the physical representations of it aren’t too realistic.
Mary was probably younger than the women portrayed in those paintings — it’s likely that she was in her early teens. Nazareth, where she lived, was an out-of-the-way village, not a place where an important family was likely to have lived. (Years later, when Nathaniel was told that Jesus was from that village, he replied, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”1) Mary undoubtedly prayed, but she would have spent a good deal of her day with household chores l
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