December 7, 2012
Genesis 3, 9-15,20 + Psalm 98 + Ephesians 1,3-6,11-12 + Luke 1, 26-38
This feast is a tough one for us for we live more or less in a world without sin. I have discovered that many people these days have no sin, but they do have “issues.” From my point of view it’s hard to tell the difference. So we bumble along with murder, adultery, abortion, theft, lies, and cheating everywhere. Instead of calling this behavior sin, they just shrug it off and say: “Oh I’ve got some issues.” Despite unparalleled advances in knowledge and technology, human kind has made a mess of things. We don’t know, or don’t care to know how to distribute the abundant food supplies of the world, with the result that many go hungry while others are overfed and die of diabetes. We continuously struggle to keep deadly chemicals out of our water. Terrorism has become a way of life all over the world. War is endemic, and we count ourselves lucky if it is confined to far off places and not affecting us here at home. Many ndividuals find their lives to be without meaning. The most sacred ties between human beings, marriage and family, are looked upon as outdated by some and as the source of heartbreak and ruin for others. Suddenly if you look at the whole picture, you can begin to understand what “Original Sin” really means. This way more than a world with “issues.” So, our rich tradition suggests that just before we celebrate the Feast of our Redemption at Christmas we take a day to reflect upon our need for that redemption by looking again at the possibility that there could be and has been a life without sin.
There is an old joke that you may well have heard that leads us to a very important truth behind this feast. The Pharisees bring the woman before Jesus for judgment and Jesus says, “Let the person who is without sin cast the first stone.” They fell silent, and then, all of a sudden a stone came flying from the crowd. Jesus looks up, surprised and amused, and then says, “Hold it, mother? I am trying to make a point, here.” Sinlessness or “Grace” is a gift. It is not something we can achieve on our own. In my 45 years as a priest, I’ve met a lot of people who think they have earned holiness. They look at holiness and approach it as a personal achievement. The result of that thinking is a holier-than-thou attitude toward others who have not attained their level of holiness. While they may not be murderers or thieves, they become intolerant, angry and judgmental toward those they regard as sinners. People like that would not hesitate to throw the first stone at a sinner caught red-handed, like the woman in our story. They want punishment not mercy. They demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That is not holiness.
This is why the message of the Immaculate Conception, becomes a very important one. It reminds us that Mary’s sinlessness is not something Mary achieved by her own power. It is a gift of God, given to her right from the very moment of her conception. In the same vein, those of us who sin less than some others, should regard their holiness as basically a gift of God and not an achievement. Our attitude should then be characterised by two basic attitudes, thankfulness to God, and humility before those who are naturally and spiritually less gifted than we are. It leaves us standing humble and in awe before a God who have favored us.
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854 means that Mary was not burdened with any separation from God. She came into the world with a perfect human nature like that of Eve and Adam before they sinned and fell from grace. God gave her this perfect human nature not as a reward for anything she did, not on account of any merit on her part, but in view of the singular role she was to play in life, namely, that of being the mother of God’s Son. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception tells us something about who Mary is. But maybe it tells us more about who God is and who we are in light of God’s providential love.
Belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary is belief in a provident God, i.e., a God who provides for the future, who prepares His children for their assigned task in life even before they are born, a God who foresees and equips us with all the natural and supernatural qualities we need to play our assigned role in the drama of human salvation. God anoints them already in the womb those men and women whom He created to be His prophets. As He told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). God does not just throw us into this world wide wilderness and then leave us to fight it out among ourselves. The theory of evolution with its doctrine of the survival of the fittest may describe human nature in its fallen state, in the state of original sin, it does not describe life for the people of God redeemed by grace from the unbridled effects of the Fall.
As we rejoice with Mary, God’s most favoured one (“full of grace”) on the feast of her conception, let us thank God for His love and mercy which embraces us right from the moment of our own conception. As Scripture says, “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” (1Corinthians 4:7). Everything is gift, everything good in us is God’s grace. For we all, children of God, are also favoured ones and heirs of God’s grace. Yet Mary remains the most favoured one, the mother of all favoured ones, the one that enjoys the fullness of grace.