9 December 2019
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
People often approach the Immaculate Conception as a purely academic question that has no consequence for our Christian lives. But this is usually because we are in the unfortunate habit of seeing our sins as an essential part of our humanity, whereas for St. Ignatius of Loyola, sin does not make us more human but actually dehumanizes us, because it comes from “the enemy of our human nature.” The more people sin, the more monstrous they can become, whereas those human beings who most profoundly share in the divine life that Christ offers them are more human, not less. And Mary is the most human of all.
There is nothing piously saccharine about someone who clings to God’s will as Mary does. It takes a tough woman to live from God’s grace alone. Adam and Eve were tempted out of it by a false “knowledge,” and the same remains true for us today (cf. Gen 3:9-15). Love calls us to endure, whereas false knowledge often offers us a “quick fix” while puffing us up perversely (1 Cor 8:1). For example, when others are involved in gossip or hurtful actions, it can be humiliating to not be “in the know” even if, when one stands before the Lord, one realises that certain things have no right to be known or done. But Mary endures through these humiliations, rather than taste and experience things that impoverish in sin rather than enrich in love. How many of us open door after door to a life that promises happiness or a quick fix, but which only reveals itself to be a slippery slope upon which we end up wishing we had never wandered.
Advent is about waiting, about enduring. Let us ask Mary to share with us something of the toughness that she received through her Immaculate Conception, so that we too might endure those daily humiliations that are the price of true love, rather then let ourselves be simultaneously puffed up and brought down by the lies that we so often choose in place of the cost of love. Strengthened by God’s grace, let us let us endure in love and so learn to hope in the One who is to come.