Word: angellic
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...drama that the eye may quickly skip over on the page. Luke's description of "a multitude of the heavenly host praising God" is certainly vivid. But does it truly express--the way, perhaps, the single word glory, extended in five-part harmony over four delirious musical measures in Angels We Have Heard on High can--the awesome irruption of heaven's fearful and beautiful phalanxes into our modest reality? As both Matthew and Luke were well aware, it is not enough just to have a Gospel. You need a congregation to truly contemplate the event. Even among congregations inclined...
...with gold stars that she will Velcro to her shoulders a couple of weeks from now. A floral wreath, spray-painted gold, will bedeck her head. All eyes will be upon her. But the costume will not be the draw. In the Arlington Heights pageant, she will play the angel who carries the baby Jesus to the manger at the front of the sanctuary...
Last year she had a chance to move up to a singing part. Another pastor retired, and Shields was in line to become a wise man. She declined. "I wouldn't give up my angel role," she says. The mother of three grown children, she thrives on the long walk up the center aisle, the infant in her arms. "I love holding the baby," who this year will be 5-month-old Emma Zintara, Shields says...
...Matthew's version, an unnamed angel brings the news to Joseph in a dream. Matthew delivers the important information straightforwardly enough--"fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost"--but he does so in a few brief lines, making the Annunciation proper just one in a sequence of such dreams and concentrating less on additional information about the event than on a series of citations regarding the prophecies the birth will fulfill. Scholars see this as an excellent indicator of Matthew's background and audience...
Luke's version of the Annunciation is very different. It is the one we are more familiar with, in which the angel Gabriel greets Mary with the lines Catholics have often recited as "Hail, Mary, full of grace." It continues with a much more complete description of what came to be known as the virginal conception, and goes on through Mary's acceptance: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word...