Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Today's Scripture
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is a much misunderstood dogma. Many assume, mistakenly, that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception refers to Jesus’ birth. Perhaps this is partly because of the Gospel reading from St. Luke which foretells Jesus’ birth. In fact, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary’s own conception. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception teaches that Mary was conceived free from original sin, and the close corollary is that she herself never actively sinned. This dogma was solemnly defined in 1854, but had been an important belief in Christianity much earlier. Even the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther adhered to the Immaculate Conception, and much earlier, St. Augustine, who was a central figure in the Church’s development of the understanding of original sin, upheld Mary as an exception to original sin.
Mary’s Immaculate Conception is understood as a sign for us of God’s grace, and as a divine gift to help ensure her freedom in choosing to accept God’s will for her to bear the savior of the world. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: “in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace” (CCC 490).
We see a few glimmerings of Mary’s special role in salvation history in today’s reading from the Gospel of St. Luke. The angel’s announcement that Mary is “full of grace” implies that this is something the Lord has done for her as a gift. The Church has understood this as a reference to her Immaculate Conception, that the Lord has made her the highly favored one, the one who is full of grace. She is thus held out as a sign to us, and a promise, of what God has in store for all of us: perfection and sinlessness. As we read in the second reading for today from the Letter to the Ephesians: “he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him” (1:4).
Unlike Mary, who was saved from the drowning waters of evil (Revelation 12:14-16) by being kept away from them, we have already succumbed to those drowning waters and are in desperate spiritual need of having the waters pumped from our lungs. This God does for us in the waters of baptism. But we are continually in need of spiritual healing so that we might be made more like our Blessed Virgin Mother Mary. The great sacrament of Confession is one privileged place for us to experience God’s grace in our lives, making us more like Mary our Mother, and more like her Son, our Lord and elder brother, Jesus the King. In today’s first reading from Genesis, we find God providing Adam and Eve an opportunity for repentance and the confession of their sins by asking them questions----notice God does not ask the serpent any questions, since the serpent is beyond the help of repentance. The man, Adam, blames his wife, and moreover blames God---“the woman whom you put here with me” (Genesis 3:12)----refusing to take complete responsibility for his sin. The woman takes more responsibility, although placing blame---deservedly---on the serpent.
As in the Garden of Eden, God too calls us to repentance so that we might experience His tender love and compassion, the healing graces He has in store for us. Let us look to Mary Our Immaculate Mother for the grace we need to live a life following Her Son, and let us make an extra effort to show up to the Confessional this Advent as we await the liturgical celebration of the Lord’s coming into the world as a little child, the Son of Mary Immaculate. After all, that’s what the Immaculate Conception is about. It is a sign and a promise of God’s grace. He alone is able to save us. He alone is able to fill us with His Divine life. Let’s listen to His call, His whisper to our hearts, and throw ourselves at the mercy of God, so that we too might say with Mary, “May it be done to me according to your word.” Let us become the handmaidens of the Lord.
Jeff Morrow