Immaculate Conception

Immaculate Conception (December 8)

Readings: Genesis 3:9-15, 20   Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12 

 Luke 1:26-38

            The Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary celebrates the mystery that God the Father prepared the Virgin Mary to be the worthy mother of his Son by letting her “share beforehand in the salvation Christ would bring by his death and kept her sinless from the first moment of her conception” (Opening Prayer).  This mystery is not directly attested in Scripture but gradually came to be believed in the course of the Church’s traditional understanding of Mary’s special place in salvation history.  It was finally defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854 in the decree Ineffabilis Deus.  The readings for the feast celebrate God’s saving love which triumphs over the power of sin and evil through Christ’s death and resurrection and the obedience of Mary in cooperating with God’s saving plan.  Let us rejoice in God’s saving deeds in the words of the refrain for the responsorial psalm: “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds” (Ps 98).

            The Genesis reading recounts the Lord God’s searching out Adam and Eve after they have sinned by eating of the forbidden tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.  Rather than abandon them in their sin, shame and hiding, the Lord God asks Adam, “Where are you?”  This is not simply a question concerning his physical location but one about his existential condition now that he has sinned.  It is addressed to all of us in our choice of selfishness and sin.  Adam’s answer reflects the telltale signs of the alienation brought on by sin: “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.”  Adam and Eve’s attempt to become “like the gods knowing good and evil” (3:5) has only brought them fear and shame and caused them to hide from the Lord God.  In an attempt to get Adam to accept responsibility for his sin, the Lord asks, “Who told you that you were naked?  You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I have forbidden you to eat!”  Rather than taking full responsibility for his deed, Adam feebly blames the woman and even the Lord God for his sin.  “The woman whom you put here with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”  Likewise when she is asked by the Lord God, “Why did you do such a thing?” the woman blames the serpent: “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”

            Our reading concludes with the first of three punishments the Lord pronounces on the serpent, the woman and the man (3:14-19).  The serpent as “the most cunning of all the animals the Lord God had made” (3:1) had earlier tempted the woman into sin by suggesting that God had forbidden the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil out of divine jealousy: “You certainly will not die!  No, God knows that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.”  Now the Lord God punishes the serpent to “be banned from all the animals” and crawl on his belly and eat dirt “all the days of (his) life.”  The conclusion of the serpent’s sentence speaks of the ongoing enmity between his offspring and that of the woman.  Christian tradition has called this the Proto-evangelium, the first good news of the victory of Christ over Satan who will undo the sin of Adam by his obedience to the Father’s will. “I will put enmity between you and the woman,/ and between your offspring and hers;/ he will strike at your head,/ while you strike at his heel.”   Adam’s naming of his wife Eve, “mother of the living,” ends the episode on a hopeful note.  Despite the harsh realities of sin and suffering, life will go on in the hope of a victory over sin.  This hope begins to be realized when Mary, in contrast to the selfish Eve, consents to her role in God’s plan.

The reading from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is taken from the opening doxology which praises God for the choice of the early Christian communities to share in God’s plan of salvation to unite all things, including the once antagonistic Jews and Gentiles, through redemption in Christ.  Ephesians is a theological tract written for Gentile Christians who are now called to share with Jewish Christians the privilege of membership in the community of the saints (cf. Eph 2:11-22).  A major theme which runs throughout Ephesians is “the mystery” of God’s plan which calls both Jews and Gentiles into a single body, the Church, destined to be the cosmic presence of Christ, its head, who will eventually integrate “all things in the heavens and on the earth.”  This opening hymn highlights the gratuity of God’s favor to both groups.  The Jews were chosen “before the world began, to be holy and blameless in his (God’s) sight,” and now they have been favored with redemption from their sins and insight into the mystery of God’s plan to unite all things in the universe in Christ.  The Gentiles have also now been chosen to hear “the glad tidings of salvation,” to believe in the good news, and be sealed by the Holy Spirit.  Mary in her Immaculate Conception is the prime example of the chosen who “were predestined to praise his glory by being the first to hope in Christ.”

The Gospel for the feast is Luke’s story of the Annunciation.  With an aura of solemn wonder and joy, Luke’s narrative describes the beginning of the fulfillment of the long-awaited time of salvation.  In the style of birth stories in the Old Testament, the angel Gabriel announces Jesus’ birth and destiny to Mary, as he had previously done for John the Baptist to the doubting Zechariah (see Lk 1:5-23).  The scene is filled with improbabilities.  The site is Nazareth in Galilee; there has been no Davidic court in Jerusalem for almost 600 years.  The recipient is a virgin, who is “deeply troubled” by the angel’s greeting and later has to ask, “How can this be since I do not know man?”  Rather than normal human conception, the child will be conceived by the power of the Most High, and the confirming sign that Mary’s baby is indeed to be called Son of God is that her kinswoman Elizabeth has conceived a son in her old age.  In language reminiscent of the annunciation of Isaac’s birth to Abraham and Sarah (see Genesis 18), Gabriel ends by affirming “nothing is impossible to God.”  In contrast to the incredulous Zechariah and her laughing ancestress Sarah, Mary acquiesces to the mysterious divine plan. “I am the maidservant of the Lord.  Let it be done to me according to your word.”  Mary’s obedient and humble participation in God’s mysterious plan of salvation stands in stark contrast to the selfish attempt of Adam and Eve to “become like one of the gods, knowing good and evil.”