The Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God

On the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, the Church celebrates the blessing of Mary’s creation. As her parents conceived her in their act of marital love, God the Father turned in love toward our sinful race and embraced it to His heart in Mary. Preserving Mary in her conception from inheriting Adam’s sin and, at the same time, anointing her with His presence and grace, the Holy Spirit created Mary uniquely for the Eternal Son. Beyond every other human person, Mary is predestined for Christ; chosen to be “holy and blameless in God’s sight, to be full of love”.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that although God is absolutely able to create a universe more perfect than the universe He has created, there are three realities He could not have created more perfectly or beautifully: the sacred humanity of Christ, the vision of God we hope to experience in heaven, and the Blessed Mother. These are the words of the Angelic Doctor, The humanity of Christ, from the fact that it is united to the Godhead; and the Beatific Vision from the fact that it is our fruition in God; and the Blessed Virgin from the fact that she is the mother of God; have all a certain infinite dignity from the infinite good, which is God. And on this account there cannot be anything better than these; just as there cannot be anything better than God.

In her Immaculate Conception, God began to make the world anew, initiating the new creation of grace that will not perish in sin and death. God created the woman who will be the mortal enemy of the serpent, the New Eve whose seed will crush the head of the serpent. In her Immaculate Conception, God not only declared war on Satan, sin, and death, but ensured the victory. This saving grace, flowing from the foreseen merits of Christ’s Passion, is infinitely stronger than the forces of evil in our fallen world. The Immaculate Conception is the dawn of our salvation in Jesus Christ. It is the beginning of the victory of God that will only be fully realized on the last day.

Why, you may ask, did God grace Mary so wondrously at the moment of her creation? In the first place, in the Immaculate Conception, God the Father prepared a worthy dwelling place for His Son. He desired to create a person who would possess in her created being a finite, yet immense, likeness of His infinite holiness. He wished His Son, made man, to find a dwelling place as much like Heaven as Heaven itself. Consequently, the purity of Mary is a created reflection of the purity of the Eternal Father. In the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, the Father created a new paradise for the New Adam.

Through the grace of her conception, God created the purest freedom in Mary so that she might assent freely and with her entire being to His virginal conception and birth, to his suffering and death, even to His outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Mary is the Bride who freely and lovingly assents with unimpaired freedom to the coming of God into human flesh, into human history. Her fiat is her wedding vow: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say”. Mary is pure welcome, sheer availability, total self-gift. There is nothing in her that resists the coming of the Savior-God. Her joyful reception of the Word reflects finitely the Father’s desire to give us everything in the gift of His only Son.

Second, by preserving Mary from original and actual sin, God prepared her to stand with her Son as He offered the sacrifice that reconciles each of us to the Father. If you or I were present on Calvary, we would need to fall on our faces at the feet of the crucified Lord, acknowledging that we contributed generously to His suffering and death by our sins.

Mary, preserved from sin, was totally vulnerable to Jesus’ pain and ready to be taken up by the Holy Spirit into His sacrifice – to offer Him back to the Father and to offer her own agony through Him for us. In her anguish on Calvary, the sinless Virgin gave birth again, this time to all the members of the body of her Son. She gave birth to the new creation: “Woman, behold your son”. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council admirably described this mystery in Lumen Gentium (61): “In a wholly singular way, Mary cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the work of the Savior in restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace.”

“A mother to us in the order of Grace”. This is the third reason for the Immaculate Conception. God prepared Mary in her creation to be our Mother in the Holy Spirit. Her Immaculate Heart was so dilated by her union with Christ in all of His mysteries that there is a place there for each of us – and a very certain place for those who know that they are sinners in dire need of Christ’s saving grace.

Many priests observe that people sorely in need of God’s mercy often come back to the Sacraments on or around the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. This is not difficult to understand. Mary whose heart was never touched by sin or selfishness was prepared by the Holy Spirit to help her children in their personal struggles with sin and selfishness. She is no stranger to sin nor does she turn away from it. With fortitude, she witnessed her Son crushed and destroyed by sin as He hung in agony on the cross. In the light of His resurrection, Mary understands that the person truly destroyed on Calvary was Satan; the realities crushed, sin and death. The closer, the more intimate the Christian is with Mary, the more she will help him know his weaknesses and bring them with confidence to Jesus. She loves, so to speak, to crush the head of the serpent, especially when he tries to intrude himself into the hearts of her children.

God created Mary immaculate to participate fully and uniquely in her Son’s mission of redemption. Sharing the work of Christ is the glory of every baptized Christian and, in a special way, of priests. The priestly vocation is precisely to administer the grace of the Redeemer to others through the preaching of the Word, the celebration of the Sacraments and pastoral charity in all its forms. Consequently, the priest needs a particularly intimate union with the mother and associate of the Redeemer

Allow Mary into everything you do for Jesus and His Church. Entrust everything – EVERYTHING - to her. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand that nothing supernatural is possible without the maternal help of the Blessed Mother. You may have tons of talents that will empower you, humanly speaking, to be apparently successful and popular as a priest. Natural talent does not ensure authentic priestly fruitfulness. You will be ordained to be “fathers in the Holy Spirit”, that is, to impart and nurture the life of Sanctifying Grace in the souls of the faithful. Today is the Solemnity of that Grace. Through your filial love for Mary and your habitual recourse to her intercession she herself will nurture your supernatural fruitfulness as priests.

On this most sacred and mystery-laden of Mary’s feasts may we all be convinced, as was Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, that “nothing is impossible for him who has Mary as his mother”.

Rev. Frederick L. Miller

Chapel of the Immaculate Conception

Mount St. Mary’s Seminary

December 8, 2006