The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady

The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady helps us to understand our relationship as human beings to the God who created us and who has redeemed us in Christ.  Today, we celebrate that Mary’s sinlessness is not something she could secure by her own power; it is a gift of God, a work of grace which became effective at the very first moment of her conception.  We might almost say it was in the genes!

The event we celebrate today affirms that, by the grace of God, Mary was shielded from the original sin which is remitted in baptism; from that sin which all humankind inherits at the very moment we begin to live in the womb.  It means that Mary was not burdened with a defective human nature; she came into the world with a perfect human nature like that of the mythical Adam and Eve before they decided to use their God-given free will for their own selfish ends; before they ‘fell from grace’, as we say.  God gave Mary this gift not as a reward for anything she did, nor on account of any merit on her part.  She was graced in this way solely in view of the singular role she was to play in life, namely, to be the mother of

God’s own Son.  Whilst the Immaculate Conception tells us something about who Mary is, it tells us much more about who God is and his disposition towards his sinful people.  In Mary, God prepared a dwelling place on earth fit for his Son, as the Collect for today’s Mass says.

So belief in the Immaculate Conception is belief in a provident God who prepares the way for his saving plan to unfold.  God prepares his children for their assigned task in life, even before they are born.  God foresees and equips us with all the natural and supernatural qualities we need in order to play our part in his ongoing drama of human salvation.  He told the prophet 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’ (Jer. 1:5).  God doesn’t simply throw us into the world to get by as best we can; he graces us with all that we need.  If we could really believe that, what a difference it would make to Christian witness and proclamation; no longer would we undervalue ourselves and think that we are of no real importance – we would be confident and bold, and we would give the praise to the God who gives us his grace.

As we rejoice with Mary, God’s most favoured one, the one who is ‘full of grace’, on her feast day, let us thank God for his love and mercy which embraces us from the first moment of our own conception.  He fills us with his grace when we are baptised; and then, when we turn away from him through sin, he forgives us through the sacrament of reconciliation whenever we turn to him in true repentance – he renews our baptismal innocence all over again.  Everything is gift; everything good in us is the work of God’s grace.  For we all, children of God, are also favoured ones and heirs to a share in God’s own life.

Commemoration of All Souls

There is an intrinsic link between All Souls Day, which we celebrate today, and All Saints Day, which we celebrated yesterday.  It would be completely wrong, even heretical, to imagine that the saints are the spiritual superheroes, whereas the faithful departed, for whom we pray today, are the ordinary mortals; and that each category, so to speak, has a different end.

When we pray for the faithful departed, we pray that, through the purifying action of divine grace, those for whom we pray will be made ready to meet God face to face in the beatific vision so that, at the final resurrection of believers, they may share the life of the saints.  Those we celebrate as saints on 1st November are those who have already been brought, by the same grace, to Christian fulfilment; today, we are praying for the same end for all the faithful who have passed from this life.

There is a very ancient tradition of Christians praying for the departed; and around the tenth century this was formalised in the establishment of a particular day in the calendar upon which prayer would be offered for all the faithful departed.  For the next few hundred years, this date varied from place to place, and at various times, but by the sixteenth century, it became settled on 2nd November.

We know that, whilst human nature is fundamentally good, created by God as it is, it is nevertheless marred by sin.  We know, too, that whilst we can repent of sin during our Christian pilgrimage through this life, our repentance can never be perfect.  This means that, when we die, there are always going to be residues of sin in us; we know that we are not perfect and therefore not ready to meet God face to face at the hour of our death.  So we continue to need the cleansing, purifying grace of God to purge away our sins so that we can be made ready to meet him in the eternal vision of the blessed.  We pray on All Souls Day that all the departed faithful are brought to the same end as that already enjoyed by those we venerate as saints.

The most perfect and powerful prayer of intercession we can offer is the holy Mass because here, the sacrifice of Jesus is made present through the action of the Holy Spirit and at the hands of the priest.  Jesus' sacrifice, his offering of himself for the sins of the world, is the only perfect act of intercession and offering to God the Father that has ever been made.  So when we offer Mass on All Souls Day for all the faithful departed, we are doing here on earth the very most we can do for them.  We ask God to cleanse them of all that keeps them from the full sharing in the divine life that he has in store for them; and we ask God to make them perfectly one with all the saints in the eternal vision of the blessed.