If we went to Nazareth in Jesus’ time, we would find a small village with only a few hundred inhabitants.
Today we find a bustling city of some 80,000 people, most of them Muslim, with a significant minority of Christians. It is Israel’s largest Arab-majority city.
It was in this village in Galilee, in the north of Israel, where Mary conceived Jesus. The site is marked today by the Basilica of the Annunciation, where tradition holds that the archangel Gabriel appeared to the young Mary in the home of her parents Joachim and Anne.
When the modern two-story basilica, designed by Italian architect Giovanni Muzio, was finished in 1969, it was the largest Christian church in the Middle East.
It was beneath this Basilica, in a grotto-cave, that 2000 years ago the Annunciation took place.
There the archangel Gabriel told Mary, at the time a young teenager, that she was to become the mother of the Messiah, the mother of God. And it was there that Mary gave her consent: “Let it be done to me according to your word (Lk 1:38).” With those words, the Word became flesh and God entered the world to live among us and die on the cross to redeem us.
That truth is inscribed in Latin over the triple-doorway of the main entrance of the Basilica: “Verbum caro factum est”, the Word was made flesh” (Jn 1:14).
Above those words, on the cream limestone façade of the entrance, are reliefs of Mary, of the archangel Gabriel and the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Above them in turn is a bronze statue of Jesus. Over the door on the southern side of the Basilica stands a statue of Mary, aged about 14, welcoming all who come to visit her home. The dome of the Basilica, which dominates modern-day Nazareth, is crowned by a lantern, symbolising Christ, the Light of the World.
Immediately beneath the Basilica is a crypt with the grotto containing the ancient ruins of the house where Our Lady lived with her parents. Various Fathers of the Church record that some relatives of Jesus were still living in Nazareth in the second century, and they had preserved both the room where the archangel Gabriel visited Our Lady and the nearby house of the Holy Family, where Jesus spent the 30 years of his hidden life. There are written testimonies of pilgrims who visited the house in Nazareth in the fourth century, when it was already being venerated by Christians.
Over the centuries, various churches were built over the site, the first of them in the fourth century by order of the Emperor Constantine I at the request of his mother, St Helena.
Today the remains of four such churches can be seen in the grotto of the new basilica.
Archaeological investigations of the site done in the 1950s and 60s before the present Basilica was built uncovered some remains of the ancient village of Nazareth with its silos, cisterns and cave dwellings.
Especially significant on the site of Mary’s house is a shrine used for worship which dates back to the time before the first church was built. It has Christian graffiti, including an inscription in Greek reading “Hail Mary”. Another reads “the holy place of M.”
Both the original building and the graffiti predate the third century and may correspond to the first or second century. The stones of the house and the graffiti are of the same material, age and style as those in the Holy House in Loreto. It is clear that the house was built against the wall of the cave, so that it had three constructed walls, as in Loreto, and the back wall was that of the cave itself.
In the remains of the house where the Annunciation took place is an altar, on the front of which are the words “Verbum caro hic factum est”, Here the Word was made flesh. They are the same words, in a different order, as on the altar in the Holy House in Loreto: “Hic verbum caro factum est”.
To visit the house is to walk back in history, to be present where 2000 years ago Our Lady said yes to the angel and the Word became flesh.
