Readings

Isaiah 7:10-14 | Psalm 24:1-6 | Luke 1:26-38

Antiphon
O Clavis David

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
(cf Isaiah 22.22, 42.7)

Arvo Pärt (1935): Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen (1988). IV – O Schlüssel Davids. Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, cond. Toni Kaljuste. Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, cond. Toni Kaljuste.

Mosaic of the Nativity (Serbia, Winter 1993)
Jane Kenyon

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

"We're descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?"

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

Prayer

Heavenly Father,
who chose the Blessed Virgin Mary
to be the mother of the promised saviour:
fill us your servants with your grace,
that in all things we may embrace your holy will
and with her rejoice in your salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

"In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth" Luke 1:26

12th-century icon of Archangel Gabriel from Novgorod, called 'Golden-Locked Angel', currently exhibited in the State Russian Museum, St Petersberg.