Italian
The Solemnity of the Annunciation that the Church celebrates on March 25 cannot be reduced to devotion, nor to a simple liturgical memory: it imposes itself as the ultimate criterion for understanding man, God, and history. With the Annunciation, the Infinite not only becomes finite but also entrusts itself to the freedom of the finite. God does not manifest as the one who can do everything, but as the one who loves to the point of not wanting everything without man. And, therefore, He waits.
A young woman, Maria, is waiting. She is waiting for her intellect, her freedom, her integrity. She is waiting, in a word, for her answer. This is the crucial point: God does not save without consent. And not out of impotence, but out of sovereign fidelity to the dignity that He Himself has imprinted in the creature.
The statement of Saint Augustine resonates here with a power that borders on the tremendous: “He who created you without you, will not save you without you.” God wanted to tie the fulfillment of redemption to a free act of the creature. He wanted, so to speak, to expose Himself to the risk of rejection. And this risk is, instead, the supreme form of love.
Mary, then, stands as the pinnacle of created freedom. In her, freedom does not oppose God, but is fully realized in her consent to God. In her, it is revealed that true autonomy is not to withdraw from the divine, but to embrace it without losing oneself.
His questioning — “how will this happen?” — is not a sign of disbelief, but of sound intelligence. It is reason that does not abdicate, that does not humiliate itself before the mystery in a servile way, but embraces it consciously. It is reason that understands that the mystery is not the darkness of the irrational, but the abundance of the real. It is reason that makes faith reasonable.
And then, that moment. That moment that no chronicle records, that no story can describe, that no art can exhaust: the Word becomes flesh. And not as a symbol, not as an appearance, not as mythical language. Really.
At that precise moment, in the womb of Mary, the divine nature and the human nature unite in an indissoluble way. There is no longer an unbridgeable distance between God and man: it has been crossed from within. And this happens in the most absolute concealment. Not in the palaces of power, not in the courts of the world, not in the places where the apparent fate of nations is decided, but in a poor house, in silence, in the flesh.
This is where the story changes course. No longer primarily determined by strength, politics, technique, or progress, but by an event that escapes all logic of domination: the irruption of God into the freedom of man.
And yet, right here emerges one of the most demanding and least tolerated truths by contemporary man. God does not redeem humanity from the outside: He redeems it from the inside, taking on flesh. And in doing so, He pronounces an irrevocable judgment on every human life.
Every flesh is now marked by a divine possibility. Every conception carries, mysteriously, an echo of that Incarnation. Every existence, even the most fragile, the most hidden, the most despised, has become a possible place for the presence of God.
The Annunciation, therefore, does not only console: it questions and disturbs. It does not only caress, it demands. It does not only illuminate, it unmasks. It unmasks a reason that believes itself self-sufficient and instead closes itself off from the truth. It unmasks a freedom that proclaims itself absolute and instead consumes itself in emptiness. It unmasks a culture that exalts life and at the same time discards it.
And, at the same time, it opens. It opens to the possibility that man is not condemned to his own finitude. It opens to the possibility that history is not a blind cycle, but a story inhabited by God. It opens to the possibility that meaning is not constructed, but received.
For this reason, March 25 is not just the beginning of the Incarnation: it is the beginning of a new world. From that moment on, the world is no longer simply a world: it is a visited world, it is an inhabited world, it is a world redeemed in germ. And every man, consciously or not, lives under this event.
And here everything is at stake. Because the true tragedy is not human limitation, it is not sin, it is not even death. The true tragedy is a freedom that refuses its own fulfillment.
And the true greatness that Mary manifests in an unparalleled way — “humble and exalted, more than a creature” — is a freedom that opens up without dissolving, that gives itself without losing itself, that welcomes without being annulled.
His “fiat” remains, through the centuries, the most revolutionary word ever spoken. Not because it changes the external structures of the world, but because it transforms its foundation. Not because it imposes, but because it allows. Not because it dominates, but because it opens.
Ultimately, the Annunciation is not complete: it continues in the secrecy of consciences, in the fabric of daily decisions, in the depth of every existence. And God, even today, presents Himself not as an evidence that constrains, but as a mystery that calls and loves.
With the same discretion, with the same boldness, with the same anticipation. And, once again, everything hangs in the balance on a small, fragile, yet decisive word: “Fiat”, “Let it be done!”.
