October is the second of two months each year dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, with the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary falling on 7 October, which this year is the first Monday. The feast casts its rosy glow over the whole of the month, and in our priory church here in Leicester I can rely on my parishioners to adorn the statue of Our Lady, Help of Christians, with flowers as they do in May.
On 7 October our Gospel reading will be the story of the Annunciation, in which St Luke relates both the message of the angel and Our Lady’s response. It is upon the latter that I wish to focus. St Luke places the story in parallel with that of the earlier visit of the Angel Gabriel to Zechariah, a visit that ends with the latter being struck dumb as a response to his question “How shall I know this?” By juxtaposing these stories the Evangelist invites us to note both the similarities and the differences, and one of the most striking examples of both is that Mary, too, asks a question: “How can this be?”
