OUR IMMACULATE RE-CONCEPTION

SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Gen 3:9-15,20; Ps 98:1-4; Eph 1:3-6,11-12; Lk 1:26-38

Reborn in the Original Innocence

On this solemn feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we celebrate the wonders God has done for us by choosing Mary and exempting her from the contamination of the original sin of Adam and Eve. It is our proper celebration and a day of great rejoicing. The salvation God promised after the original fall he has now bestowed by the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin. It is a wonderful favour done to the Blessed Virgin and all her children called to salvation. After detailing the consequences of their disobedience to his command in the Garden of Eden, God promised to work out salvation for humankind in these words. “I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. It will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” In these words, the Church has long noted the hope given to man by God, of an eternal redemption he will work through the instrumentality of the promised woman and her offspring. Because sin was an offshoot of the interaction between Eve and the devil, who appeared to her in the form of a serpent, thus a sinful friendship was struck that fostered the multiplication of sins, God promised to put a divide between the devil and the promised woman that will make it impossible for her and her offspring to disobey God’s words. That is the meaning of the enmity God would create between them.

The Gospel passage from St. Luke’s Gospel presents the angel Gabrial identifying the Blessed Virgin Mary as the favoured woman of the ancient promise. “The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’” We take note of the parallel between this reported encounter and the ancient one between the devil and Eve. The archdemon went to Eve as his self-appointed emissary, but the archangel went to Mary as the emissary of God; the former took Eve away from God’s will and presence, while the latter revealed God’s will and confirmed his presence with the woman; the former distracted the woman and her companion from their original blessings, and the latter refocussed the attention of the woman and her companion on their original blessings. The original blessings of man rest in the presence of God with them. The angel Gabriel’s words emphasized this: ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured!’ or ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace!’ This foundation of our eternal blessedness in God is what the evil one aimed at destroying by his ancient and insidious attack on Eve and her offspring. The same foundation of our blessedness is what God restored in and through the Blessed Virgin Mary and her offspring, for her offspring himself is Emmanuel.

Saint Paul expanded on this foundation of our blessings in his letter to the Ephesians. “Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ. Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence.” Thus, the blessings embodied in the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Son, Jesus Christ, are not hers alone but belong to her offspring also, who would live in the presence of God in enmity with the evil one. The spiritual blessings of heaven in Jesus Christ were for us before the foundation of the world. Thus, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a consequence of God’s creation of enmity between the promised woman and her offspring and the serpent and its offspring. It is our solemn feast because what belongs to her because of her Immaculate Conception belongs to us because of our immaculate re-conception through grace and in the Holy Spirit. Paul implies this by saying that God determined “we should become his adopted sons, through Jesus Christ for his own kind purposes, to make us praise the glory of his grace, his free gift to us in the Beloved.” So, all who are re-conceived and born immaculate through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ learn to sing a new song with the Blessed Virgin Mother to God. “Sing a new song to the Lord for he has worked wonders. His right hand and his holy arm have brought salvation.” The essence of the new song we sing with our minds, hearts, and lives is what she says in tune with us: “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me.” Only the redeemed can sing this spiritual song.

Let us pray: O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son, grant, we pray, that, as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw, so, through her intercession, we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.