Today, Mrach 25, as our Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Annunciation we are first invited to read and reflect on a passage from the first book of Chronicles (17:1-15) entitled "A prophecy about the Son of David." Our treasure, which follows, is from a letter by Saint Leo the Great, Pope.
The Solemnity of the Annunciation commemorates the visit of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, during which he informed her that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The Feast of the Annunciation is observed almost universally throughout Christianity, especially within the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism. It is a major Marian feast, classified as a solemnity in the Catholic Church because it announces the incarnation of Christ, it is counted as one of the eight great feasts of the Lord. The importance attached to the Annunciation, especially in the Catholic Church, are the Angelus and the Hail Mary prayers, the event's position as the first Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, the Novena for the Feast of the Annunciation, and the numerous depictions of the Annunciation in Christian art.
Saint Leo became pope in the year 440. Saint Leo was a Roman aristocrat, and was the first pope to have been called "the Great". Saint Leo is known as one of the best administrative popes of the ancient Church. His work branched into many areas of the church, indicative of his notion of the pope's total responsibility for the flock of Christ. In the 96 sermons which have come down to us, we find Leo stressing the virtues of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, and expounding Catholic doctrine with clarity and conciseness, particularly the dogma of the Incarnation. Leo is perhaps best known for having met Attila the Hun in 452 and having persuaded him to turn back from his invasion of Italy.
The Books of Chronicles record in some detail the lengthy span (some five hundred fifty years) from the death of King Saul to the return from the exile. Unlike today's history writing, wherein factual accuracy and impartiality of judgment are the norm, biblical history, with rare exceptions, was less concerned with reporting in precise detail all the facts of a situation than with drawing out the meaning of those facts. Biblical history was thus primarily interpretative, and its purpose was to disclose the action of the living God in human affairs. For this reason we speak of it as "sacred history."
These characteristics are apparent when we examine the primary objective of the Chronicler (the conventional designation for the anonymous author) in compiling his work. Given the situation which confronted the Jewish people at this time (the end of the fifth century B.C.), the Chronicler realized that Israel's political greatness was a thing of the past. Yet, for the Chronicler, Israel's past held the key to the people's future. In particular, the Chronicler aimed to establish and defend the legitimate claims of the Davidic monarchy in Israel's history, and to underscore the status of Jerusalem and its divinely established Temple worship as the center of religious life for the Jewish people. If Judaism was to survive and prosper, it would have to heed the lessons of the past and devoutly serve its God in the place where he had chosen to dwell, the Temple in Jerusalem. From the Chronicler's point of view, the reigns of David and Solomon were the ideal to which all subsequent rule in Judah must aspire. The Chronicler was much more interested in David's religious and cultic influence than in his political power, however. He saw David's (and Solomon's) primary importance as deriving rather from their roles in the establishment of Jerusalem and its Temple as the center of the true worship of the Lord. Furthermore, he presents David as the one who prescribed the Temple's elaborate ritual and who appointed the Levites to supervise the liturgical services there.
