Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Jan 29 2025

God’s Passionate Love for Us

A stained glass window in the Redemptorist house chapel in Washington, D.C. offers visitors an image of the Annunciation. Mary looks like a beautiful princess, wearing a white gown embroidered with gold stars, shrouded in a dark blue cloak. Her blond hair falls around her face, her eyes are cast down in humility, and her arms folded across her breast. She is in a sunlit room with multicolored coverings on various pieces of furniture, a lily by her side. An open book of the scriptures is behind her. Most striking is the handsome angel hovering above her, hair wreathed with flowers, and wrapped in enough cloth to drape several large windows. Above them, a dove.

For years I confess I found it all a little silly. After all, wasn’t Mary an illiterate peasant woman, living in a small town? Her appearance, clothing, and household furnishings would have been quite simple. But one day, the look in the angel’s eyes caught my attention as it never had before. I realized what the artist was trying to communicate. Gabriel, whose name means “God is strong,” was looking so lovingly and protectively at her that I found myself thinking of those words in the Song of Songs that speak of a love “stronger than death,” one that “deep waters cannot quench, nor floods sweep away.” As Gabriel stands in for God in this scene, so Mary does for us. Today’s feast celebrates God’s saving love waiting again and again to become incarnate in all human flesh.

Consider/Discuss

Consider God’s gift of grace to you, given at your baptism into Christ. You are chosen to be holy, destined for glory, as Ephesians reminds us.
Does this feast separate Mary from us or bring her closer?

Responding to the Word

Creator God, your grace touched Mary from the moment of her conception, making her worthy to be the mother of your Son. May your grace work with our freedom so that we might bear your Son in our lives and be holy, all to the praise and glory of your name. Amen.

Jan 29 2025

Scripture Study for

The first reading is a story meant to explain the antagonism among human beings as well as the struggle they experience against evil. The story is set in primeval time in order to show that such antagonism and struggle are universal and perennial. This is a story about sin and its consequences. Contrary to artistic representations of Mary as the Immaculate Conception, it is the woman’s offspring, not the woman herself, who will be in constant conflict with the offspring of the serpent. According to this story, human beings might have to struggle with evil, but they will not be conquered by it.

Paul insists that believers were not chosen because they were holy and blame less, but that they might be holy and blameless. In other words, salvation is the cause of and not the reward for righteousness. We do not earn it, it is given to us. Furthermore, it is through Christ, the only real Son of God, that others can become God’s adopted children. The reading begins and ends with praise of God. Regardless of when believers may be called, they are called to praise God’s glory. Adoption, redemption, and forgiveness of sin are the primary reasons for praising God’s glory.

Reading the account of the promise of the conception of Jesus on the feast of the conception of Mary has led to great confusion. However, the Gospel story is explicitly about Mary, not Jesus. She has been chosen to be the mother of God. As the first reading reminds us, all human beings struggle with sin and its consequences. At issue is not the question of a virgin being a mother, but of a vulnerable human being bearing the Son of God. This feast assures us that Mary was “full of grace,” God’s “favored one.” We were chosen and made holy after Christ’s resurrection; she was chosen and made holy in anticipation of it. God’s plan for the whole world is now being accomplished.

Jan 23 2025

Small Beginnings

My garden experiment is to grow all of the vegetables that we eat in a year. But to harvest lettuce for the whole year is tricky; it takes planning, for I have to replant even before I harvest. So for my January crop, today I gently lay tiny seeds in the soil to germinate under the grow lights in my basement. The mature crop that I seek is contained right here in this small beginning.

As I plant and pray, distressing flashes from the news play in my head: images of children in refugee camps, leaders who lie and betray. What is the matter with the human race, I wonder?

Why does it sometimes feel that you, God, allow evil to win? Come on! Do something!

In the saga of Adam and Eve, you planted the seed of free will and gave those first parents a choice. They blew it. They went their own way. Free will seems to be at the core of human wrongdoing. Why, Lord, when we could choose goodness, do we not?

Yet even then, you wrapped the human race in love and forgiveness. You, Creator-Most-Excellent, are a painstaking planner. You planted the seed of salvation into the womb of the world, preserving Mary as immaculate so that she could be a pure vessel for the One who would come to rescue us. The end that you planned was contained right there in that tiny beginning.

So that seed of free will, though a difficulty, is not a mistake? The final end that you are looking for is our graced but freely given yes: our yes to you each day; our yes at the end of life; our yes at the conclusion of time? You must be planting for an abundant harvest!

Consider/Discuss

Do you also ever felt impatient with God’s patience? I see the distress of the world and call out, “Come on, God! Won’t you just do something? Why do you keep trying to work through us human beings when you know that we are fatally flawed? Come on, God!” How can we grow to trust in God’s broader and bigger plan for human history without descending into glib or superficial answers?
There is much good fruit in this world that does not make the news. Where have you witnessed someone’s yes that is bearing an abundant harvest? What if all the people of good will in this world said a more robust yes to goodness and justice and honesty? How would that change history?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord God of all creation, we are not alone in asking you: what is the matter with the human race? What about all of the troubles of the world? All through history, people have pleaded with you to intervene more clearly. Yet you are at work. Thank you for all of the little acts of love and selflessness that go on in homes and hospitals, churches and schools, homeless shelters and businesses. Thank you for free will, for being so willing to work through us as friends and co-workers.

Jan 23 2025

Scripture Study for

The story of Adam and Eve and the serpent suggests that the inevitable result of human sin is alienation from God and from one another. Instead of trust and confidence, the divine presence now evokes in the humans fear and a desire to hide from the divine gaze. Personal responsibility gives way to finger pointing and excuse making. Ultimately, though, God recognizes the role of the serpent, who has acted malevolently, taking advantage of human weakness and naïveté to sow discord and distrust between God and humans. God’s response is to sow discord between the humans and the serpent. Whereas they had earlier trusted the serpent, now humans will look upon the instigator of their ruin with fear and hatred.

The reading from Ephesians focuses on divine gifts of election and blessing. Divine election means that God has “chosen” the human family to receive “blessing” in Christ, if they will accept it in faith and hope. The election and blessing are a call to become “holy and without blemish,” and also the power to become so. Election and blessing also mean adoption into God’s household, an unearned gift, “in accord with the favor of his will.” This re-creation of human beings in Christ, being a pure gift of God, redounds to the glory of God, whose benevolent, gracious will is always accomplished.

When Mary is confronted with the divine presence through Gabriel, her response is at first puzzlement and then acceptance. Explicitly told she has nothing to fear from Gabriel (or from God), the Virgin believes that she has found favor with God and that what God intends to do, God will be able to do. The child to be born to her is the culmination of a longstanding divine plan. Jesus, as the son of David, will inherit the throne God promised to establish firmly and forever (2 Samuel 7:13). Mary receives this announcement of the divine will, puzzling as it may be, with trust and acceptance, allowing the divine plan for the human race to go forward.

Jan 13 2025

God’s Grace Draws Us Closer

I remember a young mother saying to me on Mother’s Day, “I hope you’re not going to preach to us about Mary. She makes us all feel so guilty. She never yelled or got angry. She was just perfect.”

The Immaculate Conception is often seen as a feast that puts Mary at a distance from us, since she was “free from all taint of sin.” But this feast is really a feast that should bring her closer.

God’s presence to and love for Mary surrounded and touched her life from its beginning. This was done because of the unique role she would play in God’s plan of salvation for all. Mary’s role was necessary to bring to fulfillment God’s desire that all be saved. So, her being graced in a unique way does not distance her from us, but places her even more at the heart of the human family.

As the Letter to the Ephesians reminds us today, God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world “to be holy and without blemish before him” (Ephesians 1:4). God “destined us for adoption” and destined us to exist “for the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:5, 6). We all are destined to be drawn closer to God and each other through God’s grace.

Mary’s gracious response to God is a model of what God desires from each of us singly and as a community: our saying “Yes” to God’s plan, so that the world can know and love and serve the living God revealed in Jesus.

Consider/Discuss

Do I think of Mary as one removed from or uniquely close to the community of believers?
Do you see yourself as having been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy?

Responding to the Word

Today we can praise God for revealing to us that what was done for Mary is a sign of God’s will for all of us, that we know ourselves as chosen by God and as existing to praise the glory of God’s grace. We ask Mary to lead us more deeply into the mystery of the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.