The Annunciation of Christ
Episode 1 of Christmas: announcement of a miraculous conception
In any timeline of Christmas events, the Annunciation of Christ's Conception by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary must come first.
To put this event into context, check the timeline of the events of that first Christmas.
The Gospels of Luke and Matthew describe the Annunciation, or announcement, as the moment when the archangel Gabriel was sent by God to visit Mary, a woman living in Nazareth. The angel announced to her that she would bear a child, who is the Son of God, and that she should call him Jesus.
Mary was married to Joseph but was a virgin, and now the angel declared that this child would be conceived without the aid of a human father. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1: 35).
This is also described in the Quran 3, 45-51 and 19, 16-26, though there Jesus is not called the Son, but the Servant of God.
The Annunciation is also considered to be the moment of Christ’s conception and thus the beginning of the Incarnation, literally the “becoming flesh,” of the Son of God. For this reason the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated on 25 March, exactly 9 months before Christmas.
The doctrine of the miraculous conception was set by the early Church at the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD) and the Councils of Ephesus (431 AD) and Chalcedon (451), to prove the nature of Jesus as both fully divine, begotten from the Father, and fully human, taking his flesh from Mary.
The Annunciation must not be confused with the much more recent doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that, though Mary was conceived normally, her soul was preserved by God from the stain of original sin. This dogma has little basis in Scripture, but in 1854 the Church found it necessary to establish it as a dogma, so as to vouchsafe Christ’s purity and divinity.
