Not to be confused with the other two major “A” feast days the Church celebrates (The Ascension and the Assumption), the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25 is one of the most beloved feasts in the liturgical year. This year, because it falls during Holy Week, the feast is moved to April 8, the Monday after the Easter Octave.
In the Annunciation, the Church commemorates the “annunciation” by the angel Gabriel to Mary, in which he appeared and told her that she would bear the Savior of the World in her womb and give birth to him. The Annunciation is a feast that honors both Mary and Jesus, because it was in Mary’s fiat — her “yes” — that Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit in her womb. The date of March 25 was chosen because it is nine months before the Nativity of Christ, aka Christmas (in the liturgical calendar, at least).
Another interesting — and indeed, cosmic — element of this feast is that all of Christian antiquity universally recognized March 25 as the day of Our Lord’s death. As the Catholic Encyclopedia states:
The opinion that the Incarnation also took place on [March 25] is found in the pseudo-Cyprianic work “De Pascha Computus”, c. 240. It argues that the coming of Our Lord and His death must have coincided with the creation and fall of Adam. And since the world was created in spring, the Saviour was also conceived and died shortly after the equinox of spring.
This leads to the biggest question of all: Is the Annunciation a Holy Day of Obligation? And the answer is…no. While it is still recognized by the Church as a solemnity, the reason it is not a Holy Day is, sadly, because our culture has become too secular. As Aleteia writes:
“The primary reason for the slimmed down number of [Holy Days] in the Church is because most countries in the world are primarily secular in nature, and no longer recognize the Church’s feasts as days of rest.”
Even though the Annunciation is not a Holy Day of Obligation, we Catholics should still make a point to attend Mass on April 8 to honor both Our Lord and Our Lady. And who knows? Perhaps someday, through our prayers and intentional commemoration of this great solemnity, we can make the Annunciation a Holy Day again.
