Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Scripture Readings: Gen 3: 9-15, 20; Eph 1: 3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38.
Nobody asked me. That declaration is often used to justify non-cooperation and just a bit of pique. We expect to be at least consulted and give our opinion if you want us to pitch in. But there are a lot of things in life about which we weren’t asked. Start off with when and where we were born, the family, country and culture that taught us about everything. We are carried by an ocean of forces that form and shape us – without asking us. It is reality, just accept it. Cope with the limits that are given.
Who told you that you were naked? We have been told and taught what it means to be naked and separate from others, what it means to interact in self-protective ways. The very word which lets us describe ourselves is a product of a language and culture that determines what it means. The words which give us access to our own experience have been created by a culture which encloses us. So much of “us” is created by our culture which precedes and surrounds us, regardless of those small islands of independence where we strike out on our own. Nobody asked us. Our personal experience is already defined and intertwined with an environment which readily communicates its separation and alienation from God. Some call this original sin.
Who told you that you were sinners? It is unlikely that our culture will tell us that. It has outgrown that category of childish religion for an adult spirituality without religion and with flexibility about limits. It has little toleration for failure but promotes development, success, and expansion. Be all you can be. Overcome that sense of finitude, limit and mortality by a pursuit of power, prestige, and pleasure. God can be ignored and forgotten as an illusion of our psyche. Evade responsibility for the consequences of your actions and find others to blame (the snake tricked me, the woman you gave me is responsible). Getting what you want justifies any manipulation of truth or other people. The faces of sin are many, but we now have new names for them and accept them as part of our culture and the way we do things around here. Some people call it original sin.
The Gospel account of the Annunciation to Mary recounts the scene in which Mary is asked by God to accept the responsibility of letting the Word become incarnate in her own body and flesh. She is being asked. God asks. Her response is born out of a self-awareness and self-possession that exceed and transcend the definitions and limits offered by the world’s culture, what the world says is possible. Her response is uttered out of a trust and obedience which have been created by the gift to humanity in God’s Son. God’s sanctifying grace prepares and precedes her free response. This is a logic which stuns human logic and the limits we think are non-negotiable. Her response is a recognition of the fundamental innovation God has already instilled in her heart. The humility of God is met by the humility of Mary, a humility open and receptive to what the power and wisdom of God can imagine.
Nobody asked me. But perhaps, we are being asked. Perhaps we are being addressed in a place of self-awareness and self-possession. A place where the depths of our souls come alive in an integrity and freedom born in the grace of God. Where God already waits for our consent. Mary’s consent in grace and humility is an event that transcends the particular time and location in which it occurred. It includes us. It is the creation of an opportunity offered to us as well. It is a scene which unveils the depth of our own lives. God asks.
We, too, are asked by God to share and cooperate in recreating the harmony, wholeness, and mutuality that was Eden. The Gospel gives words for us to understand and own an experience of God’s gracious presence in our lives. This is a new culture of peace and forgiveness which precedes us, as we say God’s “prevenient grace” sanctified Mary and preserved her from all sin. It is for us to walk out of the comfortable confinement of our culture and respond to the possibility that God’s summons is making and asking of us in our world. Who told you that you were blessed, that the Holy Spirit has come upon you?
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15; Eph 1:3-6 Lk1:26-38
Our first reading shows us what original sin is. It is pride and envy. In pride one acts on the desire to be more than is one’s nature; in envy one acts on a desire for what another possesses to the exclusion of the other. When (as in the case of the serpent, Adam, and Eve) the pride is directed toward God it becomes envy of what God has: the knowledge of good and evil. Eve was enticed when the evil was made to imitate the good. The woman had to be persuaded and deceived into eating of the fruit; she only had to show it to the man! But at the moment she grasped it she began a different way of being in the world, a different way of seeing life and one’s place in it. At the moment of grasping appropriation was preferred over receptivity; acquisitiveness was preferred over contribution; self was preferred over God and neighbor. She lived for satisfaction and felt cheated when denied.
And then along comes Mary. She is born with a sufficient quantity of grace to allow her to live without rivalry toward God or neighbor. She is able to resist the desire to be more than her nature. She is graced with two virtues that enable her to counteract pride and envy: they are humility and charity 
respectively. Humility is seen in her fiat, her willingness to do God’s will because of her love for Him. Charity is seen first in her attentiveness to her cousin Elizabeth. It is there that she sings her Magnificat, showing that her charity and humility flow from her gratitude: “My soul magnifies the Lord…for He has looked with favor on His lowly servant.” Such gratitude nullifies envy, because she values what she has been given rather than coveting what another has. It nullifies pride because she knows her right relationship as a receiver of God’s favor.
It would seem that being free of the self-centeredness of Original Sin would give Mary an advantage the rest of us do not have. It does. But our lives are meant to be given to the same kind of devotion that she had. And for that purpose we, like her, are recipients of grace…if we want it. Her humility and charity shown in gratitude can help us confront pride and envy. The key is in her Magnificat. It is a hymn of admiration.
Monastic Theology, as Jean Leclercq has said, is a theology of admiration. Pope Benedict XVI has called it a “theology of the heart.” The heart was made to admire. Thus, monastic theology is a theology of the interior life and admiration is an orientation of the interior life. The monk studies theology in order to admire God and His providence. In short, we admire what is greater than ourselves.
That is exactly where the serpent, Adam, and Eve went wrong: pride and envy prevented them from admiring what was greater than self. From there they chose actions that separated them from the Greater One and from each other.
Every Cistercian abbey is dedicated to Mary because, being free of pride and envy, she is the exemplar of admiration. Admiration gives us the capacity to put monastic principles ahead of one’s own personality. If we are to order our exterior conduct to the following of Mary’s Son, we must begin with this interior attitude of admiration. And because the Love Commandment is twofold, we must come to admire our brothers. Principles and good examples play a very large part in the formation of our consciences.
Because of this, admiration primarily benefits the admirer. Seeing the image of God in his brother, the monk is reminded that his freedom is to be used to meet the demands of charity; seeing the likeness, he is humbled by the disparity between our principles and his self-will. And so he looks to Mary, the Mediatrix of all grace. She can show him that pride and envy need not make him feel cheated. They can be met with humility and charity when he realizes that what the world doesn’t hold, it can’t withhold.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15,20; Eph 1:3-6, 11f; Lk 1:26-38
Many fairy tales are stories about struggles between an innocent girl and her enemy. Think of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, the Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast. Innocence is threatened by villains like the evil queen, a wicked stepmother, the white witch, and the big bad wolf. The real evils of life are confronted in these tales: suffering and death, aging and sickness, helplessness and injustice, disloyalty and deceit, suspicion and misjudgment. But fairy tales also recount the victory of good over evil, the use of cunning to defeat the powerful, the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the good of another. In our fantasies we can control the outcome. Sleeping Beauty is awakened by a kiss. The wicked witch falls to her death. The big bad wolf drowns.
God also has a fantasy life, and it’s infinite. At one time we were all part of it, but then God created us. Think of the fantasies of 
Al Capp who authored the comic strip titled Li’l Abner. I envied Li’l Abner’s manliness and his irresistible attractiveness to the voluptuous Daisy Mae. If Al Capp could have given existence to his comic strip characters then Li’l Abner would have had a mind and will of his own, freedom to do things that Al Capp did not intend or will. So also, when God created us, selecting us from his innumerable other lovable fantasies. We acquired freedom and consciousness. We could deviate from the vision God had for us. And we did deviate, we all sinned.
But there was one fantasy-creature in this wonderland of God’s imagination who was His own Snow White. However, there was risk involved by giving her life and freedom. She would be as free as Adam and Eve. Yet, Mary alone, out of all human beings ever created remained true to God’s fantasies about her. Being perfectly free, she also willed to be perfectly true to God’s will. She was and is immaculate.
For the rest of humankind her sinlessness was a dilemma. On the one hand we long for perfect innocence like that in fairy tales. On the other hand if Christ is the universal Redeemer then all must have sinned. Even Mary called Him her Savior. But over the centuries we erred not by exaggeration of Mary’s graces but by denial. Nestorius denied her title as Mother of God, Julian the Apostate and Jovinian denied her perpetual virginity, Calvin rejected any veneration paid to Mary. Even saints were slow to believe: Joseph, her spouse, had doubts; St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas Aquinas couldn’t reconcile her Immaculate Conception with belief in the universality of Christ’s work as Redeemer. St. Cyril of Alexandria, Basil the Great and John Chrysostom all thought that Mary must have suffered from some venial faults.
Just as Mary did not seek to defend her innocence before Joseph, but waited in silence for his own time of grace to come, so now she waited until the Church, in 1854, solemnly defined her Immaculate Conception as an article of faith. Then, four years later, she appeared to St. Bernadette of Lourdes, and openly acknowledged her great privilege. Our beliefs about Mary were not too great, they were too small because the Lord has done great things for her. She is the most perfectly redeemed, because she needed the Redeemer in order not to fall.
St. Therese of Lisieux expressed it this way: “A doctor has a son who trips over a stone and breaks a leg. His father is at his side in a moment, treats his boy’s injuries with great skill, and tenderly picks him up. Thanks to him the boy quickly recovers. But suppose the father sees the stone first, runs ahead and removes it without calling attention to what he has done. … When the boy learns he has been spared from falling and injury by his father’s efforts, then he will love him more than ever.”
The great Franciscan theologian, Duns Scotus said that Mary would have contracted original sin if the grace of the Mediator had not prevented it. We needed Christ so that our sins could be forgiven. Mary needed the Mediator to 
avoid original sin. When St. Bernadette saw Mary she said, “Mademisello, will you have the goodness to tell me who you are, if you please?” After the request was repeated several times Mary said slowly and almost shyly, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Oh, what a happy fantasy God created! Mary is so much more than any fairy tale could ever express. Behold, she crushed the serpent’s head!
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38
Billy came into the house where his father was reading the paper. “Dad,” he said,” where did I come from?” His father put down the paper and thought: well, if he’s old enough to ask the question, he’s old enough for an answer. He then gave Billy a short introduction to the mysteries of reproduction. When he finished and saw that Billy still had a question on his face, he asked: “Is there something that isn’t clear to you? ” Billy said: “Well, Charlie Schwartz said he comes from Cleveland and I was wondering where I came from.”
Maybe when we wonder where we came from, we really don’t want a clear answer. Even limiting the range of the question to cities or families may be more than enough. Once, knowing the area or culture we came from gave significant information. But that is a bare precondition for what we then make of ourselves. “Where we came from” is only a starting point, a springboard, for our accomplishments and achievements in life. We don’t honor Lincoln because he was raised in a log cabin, but because of what he achieved in life in spite of a lowly beginning. And in this mobile and liquid society, we hardly identify ourselves as belonging to any one place. We are from everywhere.
But sometimes we hear a voice inside us asking that question where did I come from? We feel the weight of habits and characteristics that don’t respond to our willed decisions to effect change. We move into changed situations, and find ourselves acting in the same ways as we have done in the past. The subconscious and unconscious worlds come knocking on our doors. Inner conflicts and contradictions that we have shoved into closets of neglect remind us that they haven’t gone away while our attention was focused elsewhere. Our limitations become more apparent and even our bodies dictate a decreasing range of activity. Where we come from becomes much more influential than where we would like to go. Adam’s problem in Eden seems to have been about an unwillingness to acknowledge his limits. Dwelling in the reality of Eden took second place to the possibilities opened by eating forbidden fruit. It was a chance to overcome those limitations, those prohibitions, that identification with where he came from.
This is very much the common air of our culture, of the community which forms us in the matter-of-fact indifference to our real origins. We are weaned from any inkling of desire to dwell in a world and home of God’s making and are formed as citizens of a world bent on constructing itself in terms of power, prestige, and pleasure. This has become so much a second nature that the word sin becomes anachronistic. When everyone limps, it doesn’t seem abnormal. We prize distinction and separation and wonder why we have so much alienation and discrimination. We prize superiority and are surprised at unrestrained domination and violence. We prize satisfaction to the point of oversaturated satiety and grumble at our own addictions, shame, and disgrace. Is this where we come from?
Herbert McCabe, the late English Dominican once wrote:
The root of all sin is fear: the very deep fear that we are nothing; the compulsion, therefore,
to make something of ourselves, to construct a self-flattering image of ourselves we can
worship, to believe in ourselves — our fantasy selves. I think that all sins are failures in being
realistic; even the simple everyday sins of the flesh, that seem to come from mere childish
greed for pleasure, have their deepest origin in anxiety about whether we really matter, the
anxiety that makes us desperate for self -reassurance. (God, Christ, and Us.)
The celebration of the Immaculate Conception opens our lives to the subversive insertion of a new beginning, of a “new immunity” to all the forms of contagious viruses that pollute the air. This new foundation is the life communicated to us in our baptism. The gift of mercy and forgiveness is the root and atmosphere we breathe in God’s presence. The consent Mary offered to this new initiative of grace was freely given out of this new space of possibility—which is God. Mary is full of grace, not as if she stored up some measurable credit or merit, but as one in whom the movement of God is given full scope. She knew her limits (how can this be?) but her assent was access to the limitless possibilities that are God (let it be). She manifests clearly the drama at the heart of everyone’s life. We are all naked before God. Totally exposed. Sin is what veils us, what we hide behind, what excuses us from responsibility (it was the woman whom you put here with me [see God, it was really YOUR fault] … the serpent tricked me).
We are those who first hoped in Christ (Eph 1:12). This doesn’t mean that we were at the head of the line and beat others to it. It does mean that our first impulse is to hope, to place your hope in God alone (Rule of Benedict, 4:41). It is preemptive hope and trust. We first hope and then accept the demands and consequences of that hope. This is where we come from. Our beginning is in God.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
[Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15, 20; Rom 15:4-9; Lk 1:26-38]
The solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is the celebration of Mary's natural conception in the womb of her mother Anne, by her father Joachim, yet without Original Sin. It is the absence of Original Sin that sets Mary's conception apart as immaculate.
Our first reading shows us what this original sin is. It is pride and envy.
In pride one acts on the desire to be more than is one's nature; in envy one acts on a desire for what another possesses to the exclusion of the other. When (as in the case of the serpent, Adam, and Eve) the pride is directed toward God it becomes envy of what God has: the knowledge of good and evil. Eve was enticed when the evil was made to imitate the good. The woman had to be persuaded and deceived into eating of the fruit; she only had to show it to the man! But at the moment she grasped it she began a different way of being in the world, a different way of seeing life and one's place in it. At the moment of grasping appropriation was preferred over receptivity; acquisitiveness was preferred over contribution; self was preferred over God and neighbor.
And then along comes Mary. She is born with a sufficient quantity of grace to allow her to live without rivalry toward God or neighbor. She is able to resist the desire to be more than her nature. She is graced with two virtues that enable her to counteract pride and envy: they are humility and charity respectively. Humility is seen in her fiat, her willingness to do God's will because of her love for Him. Charity is seen first in her attentiveness to her cousin Elizabeth. It is there that she sings her Magnificat, showing that her charity and humility flow from her gratitude: “My soul magnifies the Lord … for He has looked with favor on His lowly servant.” Such gratitude nullifies envy, because she values what she has been given rather than coveting what another has. It nullifies pride because she knows her right relationship as a receiver of God's favor.
It would seem that being free of the self-centeredness of Original Sin would give Mary an advantage the rest of us do not have. It does. But our lives are meant to be given to the same kind of devotion that she had. And for that purpose we—like her—are recipients of grace … if we want it. Her humility and charity shown in gratitude can help us confront pride and envy. The key is in her Magnificat. It is a hymn of admiration.
Monastic Theology, as Jean Leclerq has said, is a theology of admiration. Pope Benedict XVI has called it a “theology of the heart.” The heart was made to admire. Thus, monastic theology is a theology of the interior life and admiration is an orientation of the interior life. The monk studies theology in order to admire God and His providence. In short, we admire what is greater than ourselves.
That is exactly where the serpent, Adam, and Eve went wrong: pride and envy prevented them from admiring what was greater than self. From there they chose actions that separated them from the Greater One.
Every Cistercian abbey is dedicated to Mary because, being free of pride and envy, she is the exemplar of admiration. If we are to order our exterior conduct to the following of Mary's Son, we must begin with this interior attitude of admiration. And because the Love Commandment is twofold, we must come to admire our brothers. Ideals and good examples play a very large part in the formation of our consciences.
Because of this, admiration does not necessarily benefit the admired; it benefits the admirer. Seeing the image of God in his brother, he is reminded of his freedom; he is humbled by the disparity in the likeness; and encouraged by the promise of grace.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
[Scripture Readings: Gen. 3: 9-15, 20; Eph. 1: 3-6, 11-12; Lk. 1: 26-38]
Most of us without a great deal of difficulty can come up with a list of things that we wish we hadn’t done. The list may include mistakes of varying seriousness, embarrassing moments, harmful actions and sinful behavior. The Australian Cistercian, Michael Casey has written: “…unless we are colossally repressed, we are compelled to confess that there are patches of our personal history of which we are deeply ashamed.” The experience of a flawed existence is not limited to our individual, personal lives. Even a superficial exposure to the news media reveals that tragic mistakes, wrongdoing and deliberate evil are all too prevalent in societies and cultures worldwide. It is not that we are living in the worst of times. History shows that this has been the human condition for as long as there has been recorded history. We just heard from the Book of Genesis that our condition goes back to the beginning of the human race. In spite of many admirable efforts, past and present, individual and collective, to remedy the situation, our flawed existence continues. The historical record gives us no reason to think that our most valiant efforts now or in the future will radically transform our condition.
Confronted with this discouraging reality today’s feast is a message of hope to those who will accept it. God’s love brought one human being to the existence that we all long for. Mary was without sin from the beginning of her existence and continued without sin through the whole of her life. We cannot undo our personal pasts and we certainly cannot undo the past of the human race; but if we will look beyond seeing Mary as an isolated individual and see her as she truly is: the daughter of Zion and as such the daughter of the human race; we will be able to look forward with hope that Mary’s beginning is what we are called to become.
We heard St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians that before the beginning of creation God destined us in Christ to be holy and blameless before him. In spite of our rejection of God’s plan for us this is still our destiny. God’s love is more powerful than our personal evil; and more powerful than the collective evil of the human race. Mary is a revelation of God’s love and she is a revelation that this destiny is still a possibility for us. Mary shows us what it means to live for the praise of the glory of God and she calls us to follow her example. This will not be our achievement anymore than Mary’s sinless beginning was her achievement. But as Mary was called to co-operate in God’s plan of salvation for the human race by her acceptance of God’s will that she become the mother of his Son, so we too are called to co-operate in bringing God’s plan to completion by our incorporation into Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Mary. Mary shows us the goal of our existence and her Let it be to me according to your word shows us the attitude we must have to reach our destiny.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
[Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38]
As some of you might have guessed, I grew up in a household where things just seemed to happen. There was not a lot of planning or organization involved in our daily life. For this reason, my recollections of how our family celebrated Christmas are rather vague. We always had a tree and a crib but I am not sure who put them up. I do remember putting up the crib a few times myself. We would put books under and around the tree and these books would become mountains and hills when covered with a white sheet. There was one family tradition that was just our own however, and that was a little house we put on a mountain overlooking the crib. We called this Herod’s house. How this was incorporated into the Christmas scene I don’t know but it was always there. I was somewhat shocked many years later when my mother asked me who Herod was!
Now that I look back and think about Herod’s house, I think of it as an evil intent hovering over the Christ Child. I thought of all this when I read a footnote on the phrase, “House of Jacob” in the New American Bible. The phrase comes up frequently in Advent. “Come let us climb the Lord’s mountain to the house of Jacob” . It actually comes up in today’s Gospel when the angel says of Jesus, “He will rule over the house of Jacob forever” . A house in the Biblical sense is a seat of authority, and the source of clear and certain doctrine. How many of us grew up in a house like this — a seat of authority, source of clear and certain doctrine? I hope you all did. I think I did. Seat of authority, clear and certain doctrine, it sounds very masculine does it not? There is another way to look at it.
If I ever came home from school and my mother was not home, which in fact happened maybe once of twice, the house seemed not just empty but utterly empty. The heart was out of it, as it were. The authority of love was missing. Is not this type of love a clear and certain doctrine that guides our life? I think it is and I think it is an image of God’s love expressed in the fullest way possible in Mary.
Today we are celebrating the Feast of her Immaculate Conception, a sure and certain doctrine of the Church, but one we might have a difficult time incorporating into our daily life. Mary has been called the Seat of Wisdom, but as far as I know never the seat of authority, yet she is just that—the seat of the authority of love, the clear and certain doctrine of maternal love in the Church. We never outgrow our need for maternal love. If we have ever experienced it, it is all ways with us, in our hearts. It really is an image of Mary’s pure love for all of us.
In the reading from the letter to the Ephesians chosen for today’s liturgy, we hear that we are all called to be blameless in God’s sight, to be full of love . God knows we try, we desire this, to be full of love, but we have all spent time in Herod’s house. Mary is the only one full of love from the moment of her conception. Her house is a House of Gold, her heart a place where we can live, a shelter from all evil because evil cannot enter here. We are invited to dwell with Mary and ponder as she did the mystery of Jesus dwelling with her from the moment of her conception.
In Mary’s house, in her person, everything is restored to its original beauty. Here is how St. Anselm describes it: “Through Mary…sky and stars, earth and rivers, night and day, everything we see…rejoice that they are restored to their lost beauty and endowed with inexpressible new grace” (Breviary, Dec. 8th).
Sky and stars, earth and rivers have been given divine qualities by human beings searching for transcendence. Only with the Incarnation of God do we find the true meaning of these elements—we might add the Incarnation begins with Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Nature, that can so bedazzle us, does not stand alone, it is part of a unity that God has chosen to express his beauty and grace to us. But, what is nature compared to a human being, a living person, a mother who reveals God’s love? No human being has reached such expression of love as Mary, earth’s sweetness at its beginning, the women “endowed with inexpressible new grace.“
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
[Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38]
We don’t use the words spotless or flawless or faultless very often. If we do it is usually to describe some activity, as when we say she keeps a spotless house or his game was flawless. We very seldom, if ever, use these words to refer to human nature. We just know too much about each other to say he is faultless or she is spotless. We are all a mixture of good and not so good, perfections and imperfections. This is why it is so dangerous to get married when one is infatuated. When you are so taken with someone their flaws and faults, spots and wrinkles are invisible but will become very visible down the road!
Today we are celebrating Mary’s Immaculate Conception. In trying to enter into the meaning of this mystery, we run up against our natural reservation to see perfection in another human being. Many of us can identify more easily with Mary’s puzzlement over the Angle’s message in today’s Gospel, or her consternation at finding Jesus in the temple. I am not sure what it is like today but in my mother’s and grandmother’s generation older Catholic women had great devotion to the Sorrowful Mother. This grew out of their own hardships in life.
How then do we get some kind of foothold to help us climb this spiritual mountain where the air is so rare our poor human nature finds it hard to breath. Perhaps the name itself stops us in our tracks, the Immaculate Conception. What does this mean? We know from our catechism says that it means Mary was conceived without sin, period. Is that all there is to it? There is another side to this mystery. It also means that from the moment of her conception Mary was completely united to her Son and Savior through sanctifying grace. The Biblical foundation of this mystery is the Angel’s greeting, “Hail, full of grace” . Full of grace means filled with God’s presence. Mary is a perfect image of God, a spotless mirror reflecting God back to God.
This does not mean Mary was spared the sufferings of life. After all she became the icon of the suffering mother at the foot of the cross. It does mean that her life was perfectly conformed to the life of her son and that every thought, word and action reflected God’s presence in her soul.
She is a model for all of us on how to be a disciple of Christ. The Fathers teach that Mary conceived Christ in her mind, in her immaculate soul before she conceived him in her womb. We too are called to conceive Christ in our soul, bear him in our hearts and bring him to birth in our actions. The goal of the monk is purity of heart which means a pure spirit capable of reflecting God’s life.
We are flawed at the core of our being, spotted and wrinkled, but at Baptism we are washed clean, recreated and made new—conformed to Christ. Our life takes on the character of a mission, a re-living in our own personal way the life of Christ. “I complete in my own flesh what is lacking in the suffering of Christ“, writes St. Paul. We all have suffering in our life but we do not always make the connection with Christ’s suffering. Mary helps us make the connection, first of all in what we can read about her in the Gospels, the visible stages of her journey with Jesus whereby she becomes co-redeemer and also in her hidden life of total union with God at her conception. This union is still growing. In the passage we heard read from Genesis this morning we see the first glimmer of her life and our salvation. Her earthly life ends with her assumption into heaven, but it does not stop there. She is mother of the Church understood as Christ’s body on earth. We as members share in her life. Her faith lives in us, her hope is our hope, even her prayer is ours. Her spotless spirit reflecting God is also in us in the communion of saints.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
[Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38]
I must admit I have a very hard time thinking what heaven will be like. Paul says we cannot even imagine—it has not entered our mind what God has prepared for those who love him. But, we do try to imagine. Most of the time we project what we like in this life, or what we desire in this life and magnify it a hundred times. It all starts to break down when we think of heaven as a place with all the dimensions that define place. John Paul II told however, that heaven is not a place but a relationship. Will it then just be a mental relationship with no physical qualities? Will it be an expanded consciousness, an awareness given to the glorified body? Better to stick to Paul’s caution: it has not even entered our mind what it will be like.
Today’s reading from Paul, however, point us in another direction. Instead of extending our thoughts to an eternal future, he directs us to think about an eternity in the past. As one translation has it, “Marked out for himself beforehand.” Before the foundation of the world. This eternity is even harder to imagine. One way to try is to use a verse from Ps. 138. “Your eyes saw all my actions, they were all of them written in your book, every one of my days was decreed before one of them came into being,” (Ps. 138:16). Before we came into being we existed in God’s mind. God knows our future but we do not. Daily in our journey through life we make decisions for or against God’s will. 
We are continually making choices. We are being trained, says St. Paul, to bear the weight of glory, yet we still carry the burden of sin. In us is the spark of heaven, and the impulse to sin, what is called concupiscence. That weight pulling us down when we are faced with temptation.
Today we are honoring Mary in her Immaculate Conception. An historical event that comes to us from God’s eternity. God willed to spare Mary the blemish of original sin and the weight of sin. The redemption won for us by Jesus was applied to Mary even before the Incarnation. She anticipated salvation. We are not unfamiliar with this type of anticipation. It is part of our sacramental system. The Last Supper anticipated Chris’s death on the cross. It was the sacramental event before the actual historical event. There is no way we could share in the physical sacrifice of the Cross. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist in the form of a meal he opened the way for us to share in his offering to the Father. The same principle obtains in our Baptism. We are fully incorporated into Christ at the moment of Baptism but we must actualize that grace throughout our life. I think it was St. Augustine who said, “Christian, become what you are”.
Mary is our model in this evolution of our faith, of this becoming what we are. She walked the same path as all humans. Her life of faith developed and was tested. 
Her uncertainty is evident at the Annunciation but her will accepts in the dark. Her suffering at the cross makes her known for all time as the Sorrowful Mother. Each stage of her incorporation into the mystery of Christ is celebrated in our liturgy in order that it may lead us into that same mystery.
Today is the mystery of her beginning. A beginning without blemish. Nothing stands between her and God. The mirror of her soul was pure to reflect the Divine image without obscurity. Her Immaculate Conception is not just for her. It is the beginning for the whole human race. We all share in the fall and through Christ we all share in the redemption. Mary is the first and then all of us in her train.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
[Scripture Readings: Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38]
One hundred fifty years ago, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1854 as an article of faith. His pronouncement settled a dispute among theologians known as the “Maculists” and the “Immaculists.” The Maculists following St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bernard taught that Mary, at her conception, first incurred original sin and then received fullness of grace. The Immaculists following John Duns Scotus taught that Christ’s merits were applied to Mary in advance so that she was never separated from God by sin even for an instant. To their minds, this displayed the power of Christ as Mediator in a more perfect way.
The decree of Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, put an end to the dispute. The Pope chose the Immaculatist position. Ever since then we have summarized the dogma by saying that Mary was preserved from sin from the moment of her Conception. And we have left it with that and gone our way. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception has thus become remote from everyday life and poorly understood. If all we can say about it is that Mary was preserved from sin, then how are we to respond?
Nowadays we want to know what is in it for me.
Or put in a more sophisticated manner, the dogmas of the Church are teachings that reveal divine life and illumine our life. How does the dogma of the Immaculate Conception illumine our life? To say that Mary was preserved from sin does not appeal to modern people. We don’t especially like exemptions, maybe for ourselves but not for others. We want an even playing field – no special favors. Traditional lives of saints that begin, “he was of noble birth” or “her mother was granted a vision before his birth” leave us cold. We tend to be more like Joseph’s brothers whose reaction to his dream was, “who do you think you are putting yourself above us?” This way of thinking is understandable and common but it is mean-spirited all the same.
Maybe what the hagiographers were trying to tell us is that the saint was not noble by his blood line as much as by his spirit. He was capable of noble thoughts and actions. We have to raise ourselves to a higher, more noble way of thinking to appreciate the Immaculate Conception — to appreciate someone receiving a special favor. We have to broaden our horizons to take in the whole human race as a family and Mary as the new Eve, the mother of all the living. A privilege given to her is an honor for all in the family. The privilege is not only freedom from sin but the other side of that is her holiness. She is called the “All Holy”, Panhagia in the Eastern Church, “full of grace” in the Western Church.
It can all get very confusing when we say Mary, who was born before Christ, was the first to receive the grace of his Resurrection, or as the reading we had from Schillebeeckx at Vigils puts it, “on the Cross Mary was at the center of Christ’s being”…but she was also standing under the cross. These statements sound confusing because we are trying to express divine realities in human words.
The basic line is that God’s love for Mary penetrated so deeply that at the very moment of her conception, right at the seed of her life, God was with her. This does not mean that she was freed from suffering; it means that her life conformed perfectly to the life of her Son, and in this, she is our model. We too are called to a Marian devotion to Christ: to conform our life as perfectly as we can to the pattern of his Passion, Death and Resurrection.
This is how the feast of the Immaculate Conception is meant to illumine our life: the healing presence of Christ, which we call grace, is meant to penetrate back into our history and with the water of baptism cleanse us from the very moment our body and soul are made one. Christ’s redeeming grace restores what was lost through sin and makes whole what was shattered.