We’re at an interesting point in the religious calendar, sandwiched between the Annunciation and Easter – the beginning and end of the Gospel story – within a week of each other. The proximity drives home the point that what makes Monday’s Annunciation so glorious is Friday’s crucifixion and Sunday’s resurrection. We care about a Jewish virgin’s encounter with an angel because we care about her son’s march to the cross. Mary points us to Christ.
Maybe there’s another symbolism there as well. Each one of us, individually, is caught in a transient place, looking backward to our birth, forward to our death, and beyond that to the resurrection of the saints.
Yet in another sense, our resurrection has already happened in Christ. To quote St. Paul from this year’s Easter Mass reading of Colossians 3:1-4,