Monday, December 9, 2024

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)

Today’s celebration extends beyond veneration of our Blessed Mother for her sinlessness.  It recapitulates the drama of redemption by telling of primordial human sin and the coming of humanity’s Savior.

As God predicted in naming “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” Adam becomes aware of his sin when he eats its forbidden fruit.  Nudity aptly symbolizes sin because it universally provokes desires that often lead to lustful acts.  

Sin might have completely dominated human existence if God had not intervened.  He sent His Son to strike at the head of sin’s promotor, the serpent in the reading.  Mary not only gives birth to Jesus; she is also his first beneficiary.  At her conception, she received the grace of Christ’s salvation even before the salvific events take place. 

Mary’s sinlessness is demonstrated by her responses to the angel telling he of God’s plan.  She wisely questions how conception could take place without sinning since she is a virgin.  Assured that it will be the work of the Holy Spirit, she unhesitatingly submits to the divine initiative. 

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception conveniently falls during Advent.  It gives added material for contemplation.  God’s Son has come as one like us.  Although innocent of any sin, he willingly endured the worst of human suffering in our place.  His sacrifice enables us to resist evil and to merit salvation.

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

 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)

Today we celebrate Mary being conceived in the womb of her mother.  The event marks the beginning of the immediate preparation of our redemption.  As a special grace from God, Mary does not inherit whatever DNA disorders the nature of the rest of humanity.  She is not inclined to sin.  She is, as it is said, "immaculately conceived."  All other human beings besides Mary’s son, Jesus, are affected by Adam and Eve’s sin reviewed in today’s first reading.  They disobeyed God’s command not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. 

Today’s second reading reveals part of God’s plan of redemption.  His Son, the same Jesus, has joined us to the Father as adopted children.  Jesus has purified us of the sin of our human parents.  Now we no longer follow our desires but do God’s will.  Mary exemplifies submission to God’s will in today’s gospel.  She is challenged by the request that she undertake an enormous responsibility.  She overcomes her fear to fulfill the request to birth to God’s Son.

We celebrate Mary as the greatest of saints. She never sinned. She showed great courage. And, close to her son, she has proven the most reliable intercessor. We should not hesitate to ask her assistance.  In our becoming sisters and brothers of Jesus through faith, we receive Mary as our mother.

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

 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.’”

Thursday, December 8, 2016

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)

Today’s reading from the Letter to the Ephesians tells of God’s plan to make us His people.  It says that we were chosen before the world was founded. But the drama of salvation begins in the first reading. Our ancestors are seen alienating themselves from God and one another.  The same alienation due to sin keeps us from being a united people under God today.

God’s plan has an unexpected agent.  In the gospel passage Mary is a young virgin whose nature has been uncorrupted by sin.  She is actually asked whether she wants to participate in the drama of salvation.  Will she allow herself to be the mother of God’s Son?  It may arouse suspicion of her virtue and even disgust from the self-exalted.  But as right-minded as she is, how can she refuse God’s request?  Her acceptance of the responsibility – “’May it be done to me according to your word’” -- leads to the coming of Jesus and our eventual adoption into God’s family.

Today is given to contemplating this mystery.  We should see Mary as not so different from us.  She is not hindered by selfishness, but we can limit that disgrace by regularly denying ourselves in favor of others.  More importantly, she is propelled by the love of God.  We too have a share in that love through our Baptism.  This is to say that we, similar to Mary, might be agents of a united humanity under God’s care.

Monday, December 8, 2014

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)

A recent article on sexting recently appeared in a leading national magazine.  Sexting is the sending of nude pictures of oneself via cellular telephones.  The article explained the prominence of the practice among American high schoolers.  Curiously, it showed no particular worry that it would lead to promiscuity, addiction, frustration, and divorce.  Rather the article mostly campaigned that sexting be decriminalized so that juveniles not be stigmatized the rest of their lives.  However, the article may provide some benefit to Catholic readers by giving them more reason to celebrate the Immaculate Conception.

Today’s feast highlights Jesus’ coming to free humanity of sin.  The first reading shows how sin began and continues to happen.  The second speaks of God’s plan to liberate humans from sin’s curse, and the gospel begins the drama of Jesus’ victory over sin.  Jesus eventually saves humans from their folly by his death on the cross which wins the grace to live temperate lives.  By virtue of her crucial role in the story, Mary herself was conceived without any proclivity to sin.

We should see Mary as more than the instrumental cause of bringing Jesus to birth.  She dared to do God’s will at considerable cost to herself.  Modelling what it means to act on the word of God, she raised Jesus religiously along with St. Joseph.  Finally, she shared the pain of Jesus’ death by experiencing what every parent hopes to avoid – seeing their children die before them.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Genesis 3:9-15.29; Ephesians 1:3-6.11-12; Luke 1:26-38) 

The gardener held up his trophy.  It was the head of a cobra, the most dreaded snake in his country.  He had severed it while cutting grass with his scythe.  One swoop, done almost by reflex, undid the serpent before it could strike with deadly venom. Once again, the manifest truth of the reading from Genesis today is demonstrated.

The passage stating that a man will strike a serpent’s head while it can only assault a man’s heal intends to give the origin of both the snake’s legless anatomy and the human propensity to cut off its head.  Cutting off a snake's tail would not remove its threat, and its heart is difficult to locate. The surest way to decommission a serpent is to decapitate it.  The reading, however, hints at a deeper meaning than human-serpentine rivalry.  Read from a Christian perspective, it foreshadows how Mary's son, Jesus, will effectively defeat evil by dying on the cross and rising from the dead.  

This implication may sound whimsical as sin is experienced as ubiquitous as dust in a windstorm.  Yet with the fortitude of Jesus’ cross and in the light of his resurrection we can identify evil, ward it off, and root it out.  Mary's Immaculate Conception speaks of the specialness of Christ.  Born of one preserved from all sin, he has enabled us to overcome sin's effect in our lives.

Wednesday, December 8, 010

The 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)

The United States has the same Immaculate Virgin Mary for its patron as does Nicaragua in Central America. However, the mighty nation does not approach the much smaller country in the magnitude of celebration for her feast day. The night of December 7 in Nicaragua can be compared only to Christmas Eve. People gather with their families in their homes eating and rejoicing. Inevitably the cry rings out, “Why such jubilation? The reason is Mary’s Immaculate Conception.”

Especially the poor, who are legion in Nicaragua, revel because they easily identify with the humble virgin. They sense that God cares about them because He has exalted this possibly lower class, in any case underappreciated person with an honor unparalleled except in the case of His only-begotten Son. But every human should feel the excitement because each of us carried flesh bound for oblivion but now with hope of everlasting life since Mary’s Immaculate Conception anticipates Jesus’ rising from the dead with new life for his followers.

The Immaculate Conception means that Mary was never stained by original sin. This great dispensation did not make life easy for her, only virtuous. The same grace that impelled her to goodness works within us who have been washed in the waters of Baptism. As we celebrate her feast, we should resolve to imitate her virtue.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

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)

At an interview for a job with the Church a young woman was asked what the Immaculate Conception means. The woman hesitated before answering and then sputtered the common misconception which many who should know better think.

The Immaculate Conception, of course, refers to the special dispensation from original sin which Christ’s paschal victory won for his mother. It means that sin never touched Mary from the moment of conception to her last breath on earth. It seems to be an exaggeration to say that she never knew the effects of sin. After all, she witnessed the terrible price that sin exacted from her son Jesus. But we may presume that at Jesus’ death her sorrow was not tinged by self-pity, as ours often is, or by contempt for Jesus’ executors.

In the polemics over the years about Mary’s Immaculate Conception Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, sometimes lose sight of the fact that Mary’s special grace is but an extension of every baptized person’s. Through Christ’s grace Mary never sinned, and through it Christians have their sins forgiven. Rather than contending over theological distinctions, Protestants as well as Catholics should seek to emulate Mary’s desire to have God’s will carried out in her.

Homilette for Monday, December 8, 2008

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)

Once in a while in newspapers, Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus is referred to as her “Luke 1:26-38.” Both events are mysteries of faith, but we must be careful not to confuse the two.

We believe that Mary, by virtue of a special grace anticipating her being the mother of Jesus, was immaculately conceived. This means that from her conception in her mother’s womb she suffered none of the effects of the sin committed by Adam and Eve. We remember that the first humans disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. Actually concupiscence – the desire to be like God – caused Adam and Eve to disobey. What to them was a radical decision, to their descendants has become an innate defect. Mary alone, except for Jesus, the “God-man,” was spared of this fate.

The gospel today demonstrates Mary’s innocent nature. Addressed by God’s messenger as “full of grace,” Mary has difficulty understanding that the angel is referring to her. And when told that she will conceive of the long-awaited Messiah, Mary expresses no desire for illicit sexual relations. We can say that Mary possesses neither pride nor lust, two of the graver manifestations of the sin inherited from Adam and Eve. Rather her disposition is one of submission to God’s authority. She responds, “May it be done to me according to your word.”

Of course, Mary gives birth to Jesus who eventually gives himself over to death so that humans might overcome their inclination to disobey God’s commands. We are not conceived, like Mary, with a completely innocent nature. But through Christ’s efforts, we can conquer pride, lust and other forms of sin.