“Tomorrow, March 25th, is the Feast of the Annunciation: the day on which the church commemorates the angel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she has been chosen to bear the Christ-child who will effect the salvation of humankind. Annunciation, which falls exactly nine months before Christ’s birth on December 25th, marks not only the proclamation that the Son of God will be born in the future, but the miraculous conception that is the beginning of His earthly life. Mary hears and assents to the word of God – ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word’ (Luke 1:38) – and begins to carry the Word made flesh inside her womb. In a way, the Annunciation sets out a pattern for all of us Christians, who must hear the word of God and assent to let that Word live and grow within us. Because she models this humble and trusting obedience to God’s word, Alexander Schmemann writes that Mary ‘has always stood at the very heart of the Church’s life as the purest expression of human love and response to God... This is why the whole creation, the whole Church – and not only women – find the expression of their response and obedience to God in Mary the Woman, and rejoice in her.’
It is not uncommon for Christians to discern oblique reflections of Jesus Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection in stories and myths with no explicit basis in Christianity. We look at heroes like Frodo Baggins, Superman, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter, who prove willing to sacrifice their lives for others, and see imprecise but potent pictures of Jesus’ willing sacrifice for the life of the world. We often identify ourselves with these Christ-like figures, and that is all well and good; Christ calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him – to become, in C.S. Lewis’ phrase, ‘little Christs’ – and little fictional Christs like Frodo and Luke help our imaginations to conceive of how Jesus’ life sets forth a pattern which is woven so deeply into the fabric of reality that it plays out again and again through circumstances and characters far beyond first-century Judea.
Though it is less common, we can sometimes, by the same logic, see the great Christian mystery of the Annunciation reflected through secular fiction as if through a prism. In 1984, not one but two movies – both, ironically enough, directed by filmmakers with the initials J.C. – reimagined the story of the Annunciation through a science-fiction lens. In both James Cameron’s The Terminator and John Carpenter’s Starman, a messenger from another world dramatically disrupts the life of an unassuming woman and asks her to bear a child who will change the course of human history. With their portraits of women who, like Mary, heroically assent to the responsibility of bringing new life into the world, both films offer us the opportunity to reflect on how we can assent to God’s often disruptive invitations to participate in the work of His new creation.”
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