IMMACULATE CONCEPTION = 2

SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

PENITENTIAL RITE: Today is the Solemnity of our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Conception. We are proudly happy to believe that God preserved her from all sin from the first moment of her existence. Many people pray to the Lord through Our Lady, especially if they are painfully conscious of the burden of their sin. Mary  -  though sinless herself  -  is gentle, non-judgemental, always able to embrace the sinner without pronouncing sentence. She influences for good whilst staying in the background. Like soft rain on thirsty soil, her presence penetrates our hearts in prayer, and the affection of her Immaculate Heart is poured on us as it was on her Son during his life on earth.

The central figure in today’s Gospel is the Son of God   -  soon to become son of Mary, and the most beautiful of the children of men! This is the Saviour, named Jesus the Christ. He opens the new chapter of the narrative of salvation, and introduces the Immaculate Virgin Mary into the story. We pray our dear Lord that we too be included in the grand narrative of God’s salvation.

Today we pray God that as he kept our Mother sinless from the first moment of her life, we may in turn always perceive his forgiveness during ours.

 

THE PANEGYRIC:

What is the name of God’s Mother ? We can hear it from her own lips, and for that let me take you to Lourdes in France to meet the teenaged girl, Bernadette Soubirous, and listen to her story. On 24^th. March 1858, Bernadette confided to her parents that the Lady who had appeared had given her an inward signal, an indication about something that was going to happen, and spoke with complete assurance about the happiness that awaited her at the Grotto the next day. At dawn on 25^th. March the child went off to Massabielle, the place of the apparitions. To her astonished embarrassment, she found the niche already glowing with a soft and mysterious light. The Lady was waiting for her. Bernadette said afterwards, “She was there calmly smiling and looking at the crowds as a loving mother looks at her children. When I was kneeling down in front of the Lady I asked her to forgive me for being late. She made a sign with her head to say there was no need to excuse myself. I told her how much I loved her....and how happy I was to see her again. I took out my Rosary. And then I was unable to keep myself back any longer; the words just came out of my mouth. I asked the Lady to be so good and tell me who she was.

Just as she had done when I asked her before, she bowed her head and smiled but she didn’t answer. I felt quite brave, and again I asked her to tell me her name. She smiled and nodded graciously again but still said nothing. For the third time I joined my hands and begged her. The Lady stood upright above the red rose and she was just like she is on the miraculous medal. She looked grave and seemed to become humble. She joined her hands and lifted them to her breasts. She looked up at the sky, and then slowly separating her hands  -  like this  -  she leaned down towards me and said in a trembling voice:

“I am the Immaculate Conception.” Bernadette, in her simplicity, kept repeating the phrase as she ran back to the parish priest. When she described the incident to Monsieur Estrade and his daughter, she exclaimed, “Mademoiselle, what is the Immaculate Conception.?”

When we were students in high school, we were told about the Immaculate Conception. We were told that Mary was preserved from original sin by an anticipated application of the merits of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was putting the case in a learned, even negative way. Even the word “sin” should not enter here. So we’d rather put in the way God himself put it at the Annunciation: “Hail, full of grace!” Mary was fully graced from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb, and the reason is that by God’s providence she was perfectly centred on God. God has taken over her body from the moment it was a single cell. The Virgin Mary was already suffused with the Spirit almost half a century before Pentecost. And isn’t it marvellous that with her own lips Mary declared herself as the “Immaculate Conception” four years after the Church’s definitive proclamation by Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 1854. She was personally and humbly confirming the definition!

In today’s Gospel, Mary is identified as  “Full of grace, or gracious one.” That was a Hebrew expression understood as part of the linguistic coinage of love and marriage. So God addressed Mary, “Hail, full of grace.” He used language intelligible to the common man and woman as to leave no doubt about what he meant. .

God approached Mary of Nazareth as representative of the human race, on terms of the ultimate intimacy between man and woman. It was as if he had tried everything else: liberation from Egypt, the Exodus, the Ten Commandments, and the prophets. And now, finally, he says, “Let’s try the nuptial approach.” St. Paul calls the Church the bride, who is expected to be pure and untainted. In the person of Jesus the espousals of God and man will be consummated. Such a divine intervention presupposes a free partner to make a commitment; a commitment that in turn presupposes complete freedom from sin.

At the time of the birth of Jesus, the royal house of David lay in shambles. Israel was a defeated nation, the Roman foot on its neck. Judah could expect no help from Syria or Egypt, but had to look exclusively to God for salvation. As virgin, Mary expressed in her body the total helplessness of man and his absolute dependence on God. She takes upon herself the desolation of the rejected city of David. But Mary also personifies the new Jerusalem, the object of the promise of fruitfulness. A new marriage will be celebrated in which God will take back his former spouse.

If the Immaculate Conception stands for the fullness of grace as a gift, it is no less a task. Mary is not isolated from man’s quest for salvation. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is necessary for the balance of faith and for clarifying all salvation history. Israel’s religion of waiting, that was marked by defeat and shattering, now takes a new direction and definite shape. Israel begins to see the advent of her God in the very texture of her own history. Mary lived that religion of waiting to its ultimate implications. There was no compromise in her looking towards the future. She did not know man, she did not depend on human sustenance and power. She was poor, and introduced her Son to human poverty. The sort of poverty required from man was self-renunciation and absolute openness to God. Sin had no place in Mary, for sin is self-assertion. By transmitting to Jesus what was best in her, she was preparing him for the way of obedience unto the death of the cross, that awesome hour that he looked forward to, that hour that she herself had triggered when at the marriage in Cana she announced the crushing fact that her children were going without sustenance.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception has its established place in a liturgy concerned with the future of humanity. And we come to this liturgy as representatives of our natural communities, our people, our cultural ambience. We are part of a collective future, centred through Mary on Jesus who continues to be born until the day he returns to reward our waiting with a gift, - the gift of community in God.

Then there will be only gift; no tasks.

OPENING PRAYER :

Loving god,

calling your friends in new and unexpected ways,

choosing Mary from the powerless

and unnoticed in the world,

yet greatly loved and cherished

in your sight,

that she should be the Immaculate

Mother of our Saviour.

Trace in our actions the lines

of your love,

in our hearts the readiness of faith,

that we too may accept the promptings

of your Spirit,

and welcome your angel

with glad and open arms,

ready to be pierced and electrified

with gladness,

rejoicing in the cost of your salvation

in and through Jesus our Messiah

your Son. Amen.

 

AFTER THE INTERCESSORY PRAYERS:

Lord, accept our petitions on the feast of the Immaculate Virgin Mary,

plunged in the Pascal Mystery from the first moment of her life.

Preserve us from all evil through her intercession. Amen.

 

PRAYER OVER THE GIFTS

God, infuse your Spirit into these gifts, as we thank you that you sent the same Spirit into someone without power, wealth or status. And we praise you for the courage of Mary, the young woman from Galilee, whose “Yes” to the shame and shock of bearing your Son let loose the unstoppable power of love which changed the world. Amen

 

POST COMMUNION:

We praise you, our Father,

for the marvellous message given to Mary,

for the grace of the Immaculate Conception,

that prepared her for her vocation,

for her obedience and humility in accepting it,

for her loving care and patience

in fulfilling it.

May we, too, by your mercy,

be obedient, and be accounted fit

to be the good news to our own world.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.