While I was in seminary, James Dunkly, a New Testament scholar who served as Nashotah House’s librarian, was the preacher for a feast of the Annunciation during Lent. In his sermon he made reference to the composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli—Mass in the Time of War. I remember he held my attention—and enough so that I still remember him preaching about Mass in the time of spiritual war. Today we celebrate this feast of the Annunciation in the time of victory. In the words of the hymn we sang yesterday at Solemn Mass, “Death is conquered, we are free, Christ has won the victory.”[1] But before we go there, I want to look back at a sermon I remember preaching on the Annunciation.
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