The Gospel of Luke narrates that the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth to a young woman named Mary, betrothed to a man named Joseph, announcing that she would conceive and bear a son to be called Jesus, described as the son of the Most High who would inherit the throne of David and reign without end. Mary's recorded response, questioning how this could occur since she had not been intimate with a man, receives the reply that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, an explanation the text presents as sufficient for Mary, who consents with the words often rendered "let it be to me according to your word."
The scene is the opening episode of Luke's distinctive infancy narrative, found only in this Gospel among the four canonical accounts of Jesus's life, and it establishes several themes Luke develops further in the following chapters: the miraculous, divinely initiated character of Jesus's conception, his identification with the royal line of David, and Mary's own faithful acceptance of a role she does not fully understand.
The Annunciation became one of the most frequently depicted scenes in later Christian art, and the liturgical date fixed for it, 25 March, was chosen by counting nine months back from the 25 December date of Christmas, tying the two feasts together on the calendar even though neither date rests on independent historical evidence for the actual timing of either event.