Dec. 8th, 2007: Solemnity of Immaculate Conception

Have any of you taken a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France? I went there with my mom and sister in 2002. On February 11^th, 1858 in a small town nestled in the foothills of Pyrenese mountain, Blessed Mother appeared to a 14 yr-old girl named Bernadette. On her first apparition, Bernadette describes her this way: “I saw a lady dressed in white, she wore a white dress, an equally white veil, a blue belt and a yellow rose on each foot.” Bernadette said the Rosary with the lady, and the lady vanished afterwards. The people in this small town heard about this mysterious visit and pressed Bernadette to ask the lady what her name was. They wanted to know whether it was the Blessed Virgin. On her 16^th apparition, the lady finally revealed her name. She said in French, “Que soy era Immaculada Concepciou” (I am the Immaculate Conception). When Bernadette heard this, she had no idea what this title meant.

I think many of us, like Bernadette, have trouble understanding this doctrine called Immaculate Conception. Simply put, Virgin Mary was conceived without Original Sin. Her mom and dad conceived her in a normal way; but in the very act of Mary’s creation, God withheld the stain of Original Sin that all of us would normally be born with. So, Mary was totally and completely redeemed by this special grace from God from the first moment of her existence. This meant that Mary spent her whole existence in a perfect relationship with God.

So what is the big deal about Mary receiving this special treatment? What I’m about to say will be hard to understand, but stay with me. Every Christian was born anew in baptism with the help of Mary (repeat). We know that there is only one Savior, Jesus. Even Mary needed to be saved by Jesus. Yet, whether you are a Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Orthodox, or Catholic, every baptized person, in some mysterious way, was helped by Mary to be born as a Christian. How many of us at this moment is thinking, “Huh?”

Let’s go to the scriptures. Our First Reading comes from the Book of Genesis. The last line says, “[Adam] called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living.” Adam and Eve are our original parents, to whom we owe our fallen human nature. In order to explain this I would like to use the analogy of the Play-Do (colored clay). Do you remember playing Play-Do with one of those plastic molds that you can stamp different shapes with. Every lump of Play-Do that you stamp with a square-shaped mold comes out square. Likewise, every human person born in the mold of Adam and Eve have with them fallen human nature which includes the Original Sin. With Original Sin, we lost God’s grace. No human person can escape this.

Now let’s go to the Second Reading which is the Letter to the Ephesians. St. Paul says, “[God] chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…” God from the very beginning wanted all of us to be holy, perfect, and without blemish. But, oops, our original parents derailed the original plan. So God created an entirely new mold from which new creation will be formed from. This new mold will be instrumental in bringing new children who will fulfill God’s original intention—children who will be holy and without blemish—in other words ‘full of grace’. This new mold is none other than, Mary. In today’s Gospel, angel Gabriel greets Mary as, “Hail, full of grace!” Mary is the new mold by which men and women of generations to come will be born anew through water and Holy Spirit—which is baptism.

The Second Vatican Council document Lumen Gentium puts it this way: “[Mary] is clearly the mother of the members of Christ…since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the church…” “[Mary] being obedient, became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” That is why Mary is called the New Eve. Devotion to Blessed Mother is not optional for Christians. This is built right into our soul. Someone said the following: “The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.” Do you know who said this? Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation.

Why do we celebrate Mary’s Immaculate Conception? All Christians should celebrate it because it is the date from which our new rebirth as Christian was made possible. On this date God created a new mold; our new spiritual mother. The old Adam and the old Eve are gone; the New Adam and New Eve have arrived.

What sign has God left us with to prove this? On the back of the church, I left on the table a photo I took of St. Bernadette of Lourdes. Please take one as you leave after mass. After she died in 1879, the Church officials dug her body up in 1909 as part of her canonization process. After 30 years, her body was incorrupt (it did not decompose). I took that photo in 2002. So even after 123 years her body was still incorrupt. It is a sign that for us Christians who are born anew through baptism, death has no grip on us. Our life is eternal in heaven with God where there is no death and where there is no corruption.