DECEMBER 9: FEAST OF the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (Gn 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38)

 Some non-Catholic Christians criticize Catholics for our devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are afraid that celebrations like today's take away glory from Jesus Christ, the one Lord and Savior.  They are afraid that because we give so much veneration and respect to Jesus' Mother, we will fail to give enough respect to Jesus himself. But those are foolish fears. Have you ever known anyone who resented compliments being given to his mother? 

Jesus himself, in fact, started devotion to Mary, by choosing her to bring him into the world. After all, he could have become incarnate just by forming himself from the clay of the earth, as he had done with Adam. But instead, he chose to give himself a human mother, to whom he was devoted, following his own commandment to "honor your father and mother." And he passed that devotion onto his Church, by entrusting his disciples to her care while he hung on the cross. [To undermine Mary’s importance in Jesus’ life and the Church her opponents say Mary had other sons besides Jesus. And to support their position they quote Mk. 6:3: “Isn’t this Carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him.” If these were Jesus’ siblings, where were they, when Jesus was dying on the cross. Of these siblings of Jesus who are mentioned in the above verse two  are mentioned as another person’s children in the same gospel. Mk. 15:40: Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdelene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph. So it is highly likely that they were cousins of Jesus. And if they were real blood brothers of Jesus, he did not do right when he gave his mother over to John hanging from the cross. How could Jesus give their mother over to someone to be cared by. And the tradition says Mary stayed with John in Ephesus rest of her life.]

True devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary does not distance us from Christ; it brings us closer to him. Today's celebration is a perfect example of how that happens.

Today we commemorate and celebrate two things: first, the conception of Mary in her mother's womb; and second, the dogma (officially defined in 1854 by Pope Pius IX, after being believed and celebrated by the whole Church for centuries) explaining that, that conception was "immaculate", that Mary was protected from the stain and effects of original sin from the very first moment of her existence. Why did God give Mary such a unique privilege?  Because of Christ, and because of us. And I explain only the first one today.

First, because of Christ.

In the Old Testament, God commanded Moses to take great pains in the proper construction of the Ark of Covenant, the sacred container in which the people of Israel preserved three things: the stone slabs with the Ten Commandments chiseled on them; some of the manna that God had miraculously sent from heaven to feed the Israelites during their forty-year sojourn in the desert; and the staff of Aaron, Moses' brother, the high priest of Israel.

The Old Covenant was a preparation for the New Covenant. And so, these items, Israel's most precious possessions, all symbolized Christ.

Jesus himself is God's Word, more truly and fully than the cold stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.

His real presence in the Eucharist makes him the real bread from heaven. [than the manna in the desert. Manna came in the form of dew and that is why in the second Eucharistic prayer when the Epiclesis or the prayer of inviting the Holy Spirit says, like the dew from on high] His perfect sacrifice on the cross made him the definitive high priest of human history.

Now if the items inside the Ark of the Covenant foreshadowed Christ, what was foreshadowed by the Ark itself, the container of those items? It foreshadowed Mary, whose womb became the Ark, the container, of the New Covenant.

And God had commanded the Israelites to give special construction to the Ark of the Old Covenant. They had to make it out of acacia [uh-KAY-shuh] wood, which, like cedar wood, doesn't corrupt with age. And they also had to cover the entire Ark, inside and out, with gold - the most valuable and stainless metal known to the ancient world. These special requirements for the Ark reflected the unique importance of what the Ark contained: the Ark was the sign of God's presence among his people.

When the Old Covenant symbols gave way to the New Covenant reality, God himself prepared the Ark of the New Covenant, Mary, Jesus' Mother, just as carefully has he had commanded the old one to be prepared.

He allowed her to be conceived in the normal way, but without inheriting the stain or the effects of original sin - pure and sinless, immaculate, like acacia wood and gold.

This privilege stemmed not from her greatness, but because of the incomparable greatness of what she would contain: Jesus Christ, God himself, our Savior.

That's the first reason for the Immaculate Conception - because of Christ, to give him a fitting mother. 

The Immaculate Conception was God's way of giving Jesus a worthy mother on earth, and of giving us a worthy mother in heaven.

We should thank him for this great gift, and the best way to do that is to follow in our mother's footsteps, answering every call that God sends to our hearts and consciences in the same way that Mary answered her call, by saying: "May it be done to me according to your word."

At the first miracle at Cana, Mary said to waiters, “Do whatever he tells you”. This is what she continues to tell everyday to us. And let’s pay attention to what Jesus tells us today.