Second Week of Advent: ad augustum per angustum

ANGELICO, Fra. The Annunciation. 1430-32.
Tempera on wood. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Advent meditation, day 9: consider the lux in Fra Angelico's Annunciation. Consider the divine light piercing through the garden and portico. Consider also Mary's figure as almost in pain. Consider how such news, such an experience, such a piercing revelation might bring the death of the Old Mary and birth of the New Mary.
It is also fitting for this season to meditate on the Incarnation. ad augustum per angustum. That is, "To honor through narrowness (being pressed)." When we think of the "scandal" of the gospel or the complete revolution of values for the world of classical antiquity, we often think of Christ's sermon on the mount or of his passion and sacrificial death. But the Christian revolution of classical values really begins with the Incarnation. It is truly a mystery that God became man. But it is also an offense that Omnipotence Itself pours out Its Strength into the limited, frail frame of a Baby. This offends every worldview where might makes right, every system that bases the Good on power. Every other set of values sees weakness as bad and strength as good. (This is why Feminism and Marxism is so flawed.) But the Christian story shows from its inception that God cares about the weak and lowly things. Attend to Mary's Magnificat. Christ is glorified, then, not because he comes as the strongest, most powerful thing in the universe; rather, Christ attains glory by his descent into the narrow limits of humanity's pressed being. For in this we see that out of the mouth of babe's Thou hast ordained praise. 

Agenda:

1. Pray
2. Latin Proverb: Ad augustum per angustum
1. Literally: "To glory through narrowness." Augustum means "straits." Christ took on the definite form of a man and walked through the straits of human woe and the limits of hunger, temptation, and need, yet all the while without falling into sin.  
3. BWH Project: 
1. Presentations on a passage from The Ballad of the White Horse
4. Lecture on Book IV-V of Ballad of the White Horse  
1. Take notes
5. Review HW:
1. Review and study notes on The Ballad
2. Be good.