Red-Letter Day
The Annunciation
March 25
also known as Lady Day, The Annunciation, Feast of the Incarnation
On March 25 the Church keeps the day the angel Gabriel came to Mary at Nazareth and announced that she would bear the Son of God. The feast is named for that announcement, and its subject is the Incarnation: the moment the Word took flesh, nine months before the Nativity. It falls almost always inside Lent, and the Church has never treated that as an accident to be tidied away.
Nine months before Christmas, in the middle of a fast, the Church stops to say that the Word became flesh.
The event it commemorates is told in a single passage. In Luke's Gospel the angel Gabriel is sent to a town in Galilee, to a young woman betrothed to a man named Joseph, and he greets her: "Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee." He tells her she will conceive and bear a son and call his name Jesus, and that the Holy Ghost will come upon her, and that with God nothing shall be impossible. She asks how this can be. Then she consents: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word."
Everything the day carries hangs on that last sentence. The angel has spoken and the announcement waits on an answer; Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching on this scene in the twelfth century, put the whole human race into the pause, imploring her, in the translation made by the nuns of St Mary's Convent, "Answer, then, quickly to the angel, yes, through the angel give your consent to your God. Answer the word, receive the Word. Utter yours, conceive the Divine." Irenaeus, three centuries before there was any feast at all, had already found the pattern: the knot of Eve's disobedience loosed by the obedience of Mary, unbelief undone by faith.
Scripture gives the event no date. It gives only a relative marker, that Elizabeth was in her sixth month. March 25 is a reckoning made later: on the account developed by Thomas Talley in [The Origins of the Liturgical Year](work:talley-origins-liturgical-year), Tertullian had placed the Passion on March 25 around the year 200, an old convention held that a prophet died on the day he was conceived, and Christmas was then counted forward nine months from the conception rather than the conception counted back from Christmas. The older view runs the other way, deriving March 25 from a December 25 already fixed. Both readings are still argued.
What is not disputed is what the date did once the Church had it. By 692 the Council in Trullo could name "the holy day of the Annunciation" alongside the Sabbath and the Lord's day as one of the few days in Lent when the full Liturgy is celebrated rather than the Presanctified. The feast had to be permitted to interrupt the fast, and it was. In the Byzantine churches the fast is still relaxed on this day, fish and wine and oil allowed; in the Coptic church the joyful tune is sung and the fast is kept anyway. In Spain the collision was solved the other way: the Tenth Council of Toledo in 656 confirmed the transfer of the Incarnation observance to December 18, out of Lent's way, and March 25 returned there only with the Roman liturgy centuries later. Rome and Sarum moved the occurrence case by case. Milan folded the theme into the last Sunday of Advent.
For a long stretch of the Western Middle Ages the feast's own words were not confined to the feast. The angel's greeting became the Ave, which a synod under Eudes de Sully at Paris around 1196 required be as familiar to the people as the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and which was rung from towers three times a day; at Parma in 1318 the bell was called the peace bell, and the people were told to pray it for the preservation of peace. England abolished the ringing in 1538, and kept the prayer that had closed it: the collect the English books have said on this day ever since, asking that God pour his grace into our hearts, that as we have known the incarnation of his Son by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought to the glory of his resurrection.
That collect is the shape of the feast. It begins at a conception and ends at an empty tomb, and it will not let the first be admired apart from the last. The Church has kept the day inside a fast for thirteen centuries because the news is not seasonal: the announcement made to one young woman in Nazareth is the beginning, as the Byzantine hymn for the day still sings each March 25, of our salvation.
You will most often meet this feast in the middle of Lent, when you are in the middle of denying yourself something, and the Church tells you to break off and rejoice. That is not a lapse in the discipline; it is the reason for it. Notice what the day asks of you: not that you admire Mary's answer from a distance, but that you hear the collect ask for grace to be poured into your own heart on the strength of an announcement made to somebody else. The whole thing turned on one person's consent to a word she did not fully understand and could not verify. Where, this Lent, is God waiting on an answer from you that you have been holding back until you understand it?
The evidence for this feast divides sharply in two, and the division governs everything that can honestly be said about it. Scripture attests the event and dates nothing; the earliest March 25 arguments, from Tertullian around 200 and the computists of the following decades, are calculations about the date of the Passion and of creation, made with no feast in view. The observance itself has a separate and much later documentary trail, and a large share of the standard account of it, as reported in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, descends from that one article.
The earliest anchors that are both securely authentic and unambiguously about an established feast are two seventh-century councils. The Tenth Council of Toledo in 656 attests the feast by legislating a change to it, confirming the Spanish Church's transfer of the Incarnation observance to December 18; the canon's own Latin text was not retrieved for this research. The Council in Trullo in 692 names "the holy day of the Annunciation" in canon 52 as an exception to the Lenten rule of the Presanctified Liturgy; that canon has been verified word for word. It does not say, as the 1913 article's gloss has it, that the feast was universally celebrated. What it carries is that by 692 the day was fixed, named, and weighty enough to override ordinary Lenten discipline.
Earlier claims are real evidence carrying an asterisk. The 1913 compilation places the feast's emergence in the Greek East shortly before or after the Council of Ephesus in 431, which is an inference reasoning backwards, not an institution date; no act of Ephesus establishes the feast. A homily attributed to Proclus of Constantinople, in office 434 to 446, is the oldest text treating the day as an already-established solemnity, but Proclus's corpus is heavily overgrown with misattributed material and the attribution is disputed. The Synod of Laodicea, conventionally 372, does not mention the feast, which is read as evidence it was not yet kept in Asia Minor, but that is an argument from silence. No Annunciation observance has been identified in Egeria's detailed account of the Jerusalem year, around 381 to 384, though the text was not read directly for this dossier. Two frequently cited Eastern anchors, a letter of Justinian around 555 and a passage of the Chronicon Paschale, rest here entirely on unretrieved secondary summary and should not be used to date the Eastern feast earlier than 692.
In the Latin books the picture is contested by about two centuries. The feast has a formulary in the Sacramentarium Gelasianum, whose surviving manuscript is copied around 750 with core content of roughly 628 to 715; Ferdinand Probst argued for the feast's origin in Gelasius's own lifetime, before 496, while Louis Duchesne dated the Roman feast to the seventh century and held the Gelasian attribution titular. Neither scholar's argument was retrieved in primary form. What was read directly is the content of the two sacramentaries, and it settles a question about the Anglican collect. The Gregorian Hadrianum's Annunciation formulary opens with the collect the modern Roman Missal still uses and closes with the postcommunion Gratiam tuam, domine, mentibus nostris infunde; the Old Gelasian's Mass opens with an entirely different prayer and does not contain Gratiam tuam at all. Rome kept the head of that one formulary and Canterbury took its tail. The Veronense cannot testify either way: its single manuscript is defective from January 1 to April 14.
In the Byzantine churches the Annunciation is one of the Twelve Great Feasts and, uniquely among Lenten weekdays, carries the full Divine Liturgy whatever the day; the fast is relaxed for fish, wine and oil, as it is otherwise only on Palm Sunday, at the season's far end. The Coptic church keeps the feast on 29 Baramhat, prayed in the Joyful Tune, but does not relax the fast, an opposite answer to the same problem. The Armenian church keeps it on April 7, nine months from a January 6 Nativity it never split. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church holds that the Qurbana must be offered on March 25 even should it fall on Good Friday. The Ethiopian Tewahedo church keeps Bisrate Gebriel, "Good News of Gabriel," on Tahsas 22; that placement does not follow the nine-month reckoning, and no source consulted explained why.
In the West the day's afterlife ran through the civil calendar. As Lady Day, March 25 opened the English legal year and was the first of the four quarter days: rents due, contracts renewed, hiring fairs held, until the Calendar Act of 1750 moved the year's start to January and expressly left property dates on their natural days. Florence began its legal year on March 25 until 1749, and a costumed procession to the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata still marks the date as civic heritage. Greece keeps its national day on March 25, a coincidence deliberately chosen for the day of good news and established by royal decree in 1838. Since 2010 Lebanon has kept it as a national holiday for Christian-Muslim dialogue, on the premise that the Annunciation is narrated in both the Gospel and the Qur'an. In Sweden the day's older name, Vårfrudagen, drifted in speech toward Våffeldagen, and waffles are eaten; the custom is attested from the 1600s, older than the pun that renamed it. At Tichborne in Hampshire flour is still blessed and distributed on Lady Day, a gallon to each adult; the twelfth-century story of Lady Mabella that explains the dole is legend, though the practice is documented fact. In art the scene is among the most stable in Christendom: Gabriel, the lily, the dove on its ray, and Mary interrupted at her spinning (a detail from the Protoevangelium of James, not from Luke) or at her book.
Gospel of Luke, 1:26-38, in the Authorized Version of 1611: the appointed Gospel of every English prayer book from 1549 onward, and the source of every quotation from the narrative here. Wikisource, Bible (King James)/Luke, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Luke#1:26
Council in Trullo, canon 52 (692), translated by Henry R. Percival in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14: the hardest dated evidence for the feast, and the source of the Lenten-exception quotation. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.iii.liii.html
*Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.22.4, translated by Roberts and Rambaut in Ante-Nicene Fathers*, vol. 1: the Eve-and-Mary antithesis quoted above, written around 180 and therefore evidence for the theology the feast later carried, not for the feast's age. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103322.htm
Bernard of Clairvaux, Homily IV, "The Annunciation and the Blessed Virgin's Consent," in Sermons of St Bernard on Advent and Christmas, translated by the nuns of St Mary's Convent from the 1508 edition (R. & T. Washbourne / Benziger, 1909), pp. 68-69: the passage quoted in the Story. The homily belongs to the Missus Est series on Luke 1:26, a pericope shared with Ember Wednesday in Advent; it is not a March 25 sermon. https://archive.org/stream/sermonsofstberna00bernuoft/sermonsofstberna00bernuoft_djvu.txt
*H. A. Wilson, ed., The Gregorian Sacramentary under Charles the Great, Henry Bradshaw Society vol. 49 (1915), pp. 24-25: the Hadrianum's four Annunciation prayers, including the postcommunion Gratiam tuam* that Cranmer translated and promoted. https://archive.org/download/gregoriansacrame00cath/gregoriansacrame00cath_djvu.txt
*H. A. Wilson, ed., The Gelasian Sacramentary, Book II §XIV, pp. 169-170 (Clarendon, 1894): the Old Gelasian's quite different Annunciation formulary, and the negative finding that Gratiam tuam* is not in it. https://archive.org/download/gelasiansacrame00wilsgoog/gelasiansacrame00wilsgoog_djvu.txt
The Sarum Missal in English, translated by Warren after Legg: the borrowed Advent-votive formulary, the "Lesser Double" rank and the title "The Annunciation of our Lord," and the thirteenth-century transfer rubric. https://archive.org/stream/sarumm00cath/sarumm00cath_djvu.txt
The Book of Common Prayer 1662, "The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. March 25": the collect quoted in the Story, with Isaiah 7:10-15 and Luke 1:26-38. Transcribed from the original manuscript by the Society of Archbishop Justus, http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1662/Orig_manuscript/collects_epistles_gospels2.htm
The Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church in North America): the current collect, the Proper Preface shared with the Presentation and the Transfiguration, and the Calendar's placement of this day among the Holy Days rather than the seven Principal Feasts. https://bcp2019.anglicanchurch.net/
Troparion and Kontakion of the Annunciation, in the Orthodox Church in America's current translation: the "beginning of our salvation" line paraphrased at the close of the Story. The better-known English wording, "the revelation of the mystery of old," belongs to the copyrighted Festal Menaion of Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (1969) and is not this text. https://www.oca.org/saints/troparia/2023/03/25/100884-the-annunciation-of-our-most-holy-lady-the-theotokos-and-ever-vi
*Paul VI, Marialis Cultus (1974), §6*: the deliberate restoration of the ancient Christological title in the 1969 Roman calendar. https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19740202_marialis-cultus.html
*Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History (1896)*: Henry VIII's 1538 injunction abolishing the knelling of the Aves (doc. LXIV, p. 280) and the Chantries Act of 1547 (doc. LXVI). https://archive.org/stream/documentsillustr00geehuoft/documentsillustr00geehuoft_djvu.txt
*Westminster Directory for the Publique Worship of God (1644/45), appendix on days and places*: the abolition of festival days in the three kingdoms. https://archive.org/download/directoryforpubl00west/directoryforpubl00west_djvu.txt
Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (24 Geo. II c. 23), preamble and §6: the statutory end of the March 25 legal year, and the clause that keeps rents on their natural days. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo2/24/23
*Samuel Pepys, Diary, entries for 25 March, 1661 to 1667*: the Lady Day entries and the 1664 verdict on Dr Creighton's sermon. Project Gutenberg ebook 4200, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4200/pg4200.txt
*Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd edition (Liturgical Press, 1991)*: the calculation hypothesis for March 25, named in the Story as the position it is. Not consulted directly for this draft; reported from the dossier's summary.
*1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, "Feast of the Annunciation," "Angelus," and "Hail Mary"*: the source, at one remove, of the Laodicea, Proclus, Duchesne-and-Probst, Toledo, Sergius, 1895, and Angelus-chain material, including the Eudes de Sully and Parma dates. One witness reported many times over, and cited here as a single early-twentieth-century compilation. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01542a.htm
Metropolitan Cantor Institute, Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh, https://mci.archpitt.org/liturgy/March.html, and the Coptic Synaxarium for 29 Baramhat, https://www.copticchurch.net/synaxarium/7_29.html: the Byzantine service structures and Lenten permissions, and the Coptic rite that keeps the joy without relaxing the fast.
By 687 to 701 Sergius I is reported in the Liber Pontificalis to have instituted a stational procession on this and three other Marian feasts, an act that presupposes the date rather than instituting it. In England, the Synod of Worcester required cessation of servile work on the day in 1240. The Sarum use ranked March 25 a Lesser Double and, notably, titled it "The Annunciation of our Lord," six centuries before Rome deliberately restored that Christological title in 1969, as Paul VI recorded in Marialis Cultus in 1974. Sarum gave the Mass no propers of its own, borrowing the whole formulary from the Advent votive Mass of Our Lady, and its thirteenth-century rubric already transferred a Lenten-Sunday occurrence to the next day, the direct ancestor of the modern transfer rule.
Cranmer kept the day in 1549 with full propers, translating the ancient postcommunion and promoting it to collect of the day, discarding the Sarum Marian-intercession prayer; the 1549 book also appointed a proper communion psalm, Psalm 131, which later books drop. The 1662 collect tightened the wording and held every citation. Where the Reformation went further, it went much further: the First Book of Discipline in Scotland, 1560, condemned "other fond feasts of our lady," and the Westminster Directory of 1644 or 1645 held that no day is commanded in Scripture but the Lord's Day and that festival days "are not to be continued." The 1647 Parliamentary ordinance's language was general and no retrieved source names Lady Day, so its inclusion is an inference from scope. Samuel Pepys, keeping a diary through the Restoration, records March 25 in every year from 1661 to 1667 and calls it "Lady day"; in only one of those years does he go to church for it, at Whitehall in 1664, where he judged the sermon the worst the preacher ever made.
Current ranks differ by province, and the two are often conflated. In the Church of England's Common Worship the day is a Principal Feast, titled "The Annunciation of Our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary." In the ACNA's Book of Common Prayer 2019 it is a Holy Day, one of the days the book calls Red-Letter Days, distinct from that book's seven Principal Feasts. In both traditions and in Rome, when March 25 falls in Holy Week or Easter Week the celebration transfers past Easter. Applying the Common Worship rule across the years 1900 to 2100 gives 130 years in which the feast is kept on its own date, 19 in which it moves to a Monday, and 52 in which it is pushed past Easter altogether: in roughly one year in three, the feast that spent centuries earning the right to interrupt Lent is not observed on March 25 at all.
Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his Cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
British (Received Pronunciation): Constantinople /ˌkɒnstæntɪˈnoʊpəl/
Isaiah 7:10–14Psalm 40:1–13v or Luke 1:46–55Hebrews 10:5–10Luke 1:26–38