The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Dear
brothers and sisters,
Whenever
Mother Church requires our attendance at the Holy Mass on a holy day of obligation,
someone inevitably asks why. Why does the Church oblige to attend Mass on
certain days that are not Sundays on pain of mortal sin?
Without
intending to be too simplistic in answering such a question, the Church obliges
us, using the authority of the keys entrusted to Saint Peter and his
successors, because it is good for us and for our salvation. It is good for us
because it is helpful to stop and reflect on certain key aspects of salvation
history and their relation to us here and now. To this answer, I can well
imagine an objection being raised: What does the Immaculate Conception have to
do with us?
Consider
this headline I read this morning on the front page of a national newspaper:
“ONLY WE CAN FIX US.” The headline, of course, is blatantly false, even given
one of the leads into the article: “I will stop letting our differences divide
us and start letting them develop us.” While the attempt of the article to
encourage mutual dialogue between opposing views is an admirable and necessary
goal, the premise that “only we can fix us” could not be more wrong.
We
hear the result of sin very clearly in the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve
and how quickly they are to refuse to accept accountability for their actions:
Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent and the serpent earlier blamed God.
It was a great game of passing the buck, which really hasn’t diminished after
these many generations. But already then at the beginning of human history
there is the great promise to undo this blame game: “I will put enmity between
you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your
head, while you strike at his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
The
woman, ultimately, is the Blessed Virgin Mary and the prophesied offspring is
Christ Jesus through whom we are called to be “holy and without blemish” before
God the Father (Ephesians 1:4). It is because of her offspring that Mary
received the singular grace of being conceived immaculate, of being conceived
without the stain of original sin. Because Mary would consent to the will of
the Father conceive the Second Person of the Trinity within her womb through
her marvelous response to the Archangel Gabriel, “May it be done to me,” she
was conceived immaculately (Luke 1:38).
Mary
knew she was to conceive the Messiah and so she knew what the angel said to
Joseph, namely that the Child conceived by her would “save his people from
their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Mary knew she could not save herself; she knew she
could not fix herself. Only God Almighty could preserve her from every stain of
sin.
This
is why, Pope Francis said, Mary was “greatly troubled” at the Archangel’s
greeting to her. The Holy Father asked,
How is Mary’s heart? Having received the highest of compliments,
she is troubled she [sic] because she hears addressed to her what she
has not attributed to herself. In fact, Mary does not credit prerogatives to
herself, she does not hold claim to anything, she accounts nothing to her own
merit. She is not self-satisfied, she does not exalt herself. For in her
humility, she knows she receives everything from God. Therefore, free from
herself, she is completely directed toward God and others. Mary Immaculate does
not look to herself. This is true humility; not looking to oneself, but
looking toward God and others.[1]
Mother
Church obliges us to attend the Holy Mass today to remind us that you and I
cannot fix ourselves, no matter what the headlines say.
Mary
did not sin, though she certainly knew its effects; even so, Mary was in need
of a Savior, and it was because of him that she received that prevenient grace,
that grace coming before the Death and Resurrection of her Son, that she was
conceived without the stain of the original sin. Mary received the fruit of her
Son’s sacrifice before anyone else and was truly holy and without blemish
before him.
You
and I, however, do sin, in ways both large and small; this cannot be denied.
Though we have been cleansed of the original sin in the waters of Baptism, its
effects still remain with us; we still have a tendency toward sin. But if we
know follow the example of Mary, if we entrust ourselves completely to the will
of God, we, with her, can be made holy and without blemish before God. But we
cannot do this on our own; only God can do it in us.
Let
us, then, not be afraid to break with society and freely acknowledge that we
cannot fix ourselves; let us instead entrust ourselves entirely to the merciful
love of God, who in Christ Jesus, who “chose us in him, before the foundation
of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him” (Ephesians 1:4). “And when we are assailed by the doubt that
we cannot succeed, the sadness of not being adequate, let us allow the Madonna
to look on us with her ‘eyes of mercy’, for no one who asked for her help has
ever been abandoned!”[2]
Amen.
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