Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Incarnation: Celebrated At Conception or Birth?
Zenit's weekly liturgy Q&A often has some interesting little gems, like this week's:
Q: The opening prayer for Monday in the Second week of Advent asks: "prepare us to celebrate the incarnation of your son." The Incarnation is celebrated March 25, not Dec. 25. There are many other mistakes of this kind during Advent. Should they not be corrected by Rome? A person I know uses this as a pro-abortion argument saying, "Even the Church recognizes that Christ became a man only at Christmas; before that it was not a man, not a human being in Mary's womb."
Father Edward McNamara's begins by asking if we consider the Church is not in error, but our own interpretation or expectation of liturgy? Then we get a good history lesson:
From a historical point of view the prayers used during Advent are taken from the ancient manuscripts known as the Scroll of Ravenna (fifth-sixth centuries) and the Gelasian sacramentary (seventh century). Their constant theme is the coming of Christ, both in the incarnation (first coming) and at the end of time (second coming). In fact, both Christmas and the Annunciation celebrate different aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation and do so with relatively little attention to biological or chronological precision.
McNamara explains the dating of Western Christmas to 4th century Rome, and the celebration of the Annunciation to Egypt about 300 years later.
From the beginning it was celebrated on March 25 due to the belief that the spring equinox was both the day of the creation and of the start of the new creation in Christ. This date caused a difficulty for some Churches, such as the Spanish Mozarabic rite and the Ambrosian rite of Milan, due to their strict prohibition of all festivities during Lent. They thus opted for celebrating the Annunciation on Dec. 18, a practice that continues to this day.
I didn't know that about the Mozarabic and Ambrosian Rites. McNamara concludes with a sensible thought:
Thus, it is clear that neither the liturgical calendar, nor any particular liturgical prayer, should be used for arguing questions such as abortion or the precise moment of life's beginning. The liturgy's intention is not to address such issues but to magnify and praise God for the wonderful mystery that the Word was made Flesh and "became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man" for our salvation.
But no doubt, someone, somewhere, will see it all as evidence that the Church is, in actuality, soft on abortion. This is part of the problem with an excessive indulgence for literalism. EWTN, CDWDS, and other activists might realize that literal accuracy is not always the core issue with liturgy. The purpose of liturgy is to praise God, not trip up over the notion that our words are somehow not accurate enough--as if God didn't know our hearts, or we could ever find words adequate to the task. 
