“On today’s feast of the Annunciation of the Lord, my brothers, we must reflect on the simple story of our restoration as a very pleasant plateau. The angel Gabriel is entrusted with a novel task, and the Virgin manifests a novel virtue; she is honored by a novel salutation. The ancient curse of women is removed, the new mother receives a new blessing. She who does not know worldly desire is filled by grace, so that, by the Spirit’s coming upon her, she who declines to admit a husband may give birth to the Son of the Most High. The antidote comes in to us by the same gate of salvation through which the serpent’s poison entered and infected the whole of the human race.”*
Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation of the Lord
*Bernard of Clairvaux, “On the Annunciation of the Lord, Sermon Two,” in Sermons for Lent and Easter Season (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), p. 84 [Emphasis added]
