8 December 2021
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
“Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds.”
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception when Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin at her conception. It’s a feast of God breaking down boundaries.
In the first reading, we hear the beginning of the construction of boundaries between God and humanity and between humans with the entrance of sin through Adam and Eve’s fall. They were afraid and so they hid from God – stay away, I have sinned. Don’t ask me what I have done, I’m too embarrassed. It’s not my fault, look at them. Yes, Sin brings in boundaries and division, and each of us can relate to these attitudes with our hearts stained by sin and closed, in part, to God and others. But as God has been promising all week, the time of the Lord’s coming will be by an outpouring of life, by the crooked being made straight, and the arid being made lush.
God begins making crooked ways straight by taking a human heart and preserving it from the crookedness and boundaries of a heart stained by sin. The boundaries created by humans in the 1st reading are broken down and Mary’s heart is allowed to breathe free of the stain of small heartedness and isolation from God and others. This immaculate heart, free of boundaries, was asked if God might enter this heart, enter this body, in a way that dissolved even the boundaries of flesh and self. God wanted this free heart to freely consent to his dwelling. “Fiat mihi,” the heart cries out in freedom and joy. “God, I want no boundaries between me and you, I want to be with you completely.”
As was done for Mary immediately, so too, God desires for us – even if more slowly. God is working in our hearts, through Grace and the Sacraments, to make our hearts boundary free for him to dwell in and to prepare our hearts, and our bodies, to dwell with him in heaven. Let us, this Advent, model our hearts on Mary’s Fiat to remove boundaries between God and me and me and others.