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.
