Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(Genesis 3:9-15.20; Ephesians 1:3-6.11-12; Luke 1:26-38)
Sin like sewerage contaminates everything it touches. The primordial sin of Adam and Eve rejects
God’s authority. Its perversion does not end there, however. Both proceed to wrongly cast blame on
others. The man accuses the woman of
giving him the forbidden fruit. The
woman says the devil tricked her into eating it.
The pollution of sin is not definitively arrested until
Jesus dies on the cross. Even then, as
we know, sin seeps through cracks in human make-up. Mary, however, shows herself in today’s gospel
as the one exception to the universal occasion of sin. Faced with a divine mandate, she has no
concern for herself. Her question about
how she was to conceive and bear a son is a call for orders on what to do. Despite being given an exotic answer, she answers
definitively. She will do what God
wants.
Today we ponder the exception of Mary to the universality of
sins in human persons. We may see it in
two ways. First, we notice that what
happens to Mary happens to us at Baptism.
Christ frees us from sin so that our lives might, as the reading from
Ephesians claims, give him fitting praise.
Second, in Mary’s singular case, sin has not tainted her makeup. From the beginning, her will is dominated by
her intellect which, in turn, is fixed on the Holy. She can tell the angel in today’s gospel without
reservation, “’May it be done to me according to your word.’”
