Chosen Before The World Began

Has someone ever asked you for help with a task that you judged was just too difficult for you and was going to take up too much of your time? Have you ever been asked to do something you thought was too hard, impossible or even dangerous?

Chances are, if the person making this request of you was someone you didn’t care too much about like a neighbor or coworker, you might have helped them as a courtesy, but you were not too enthusiastic about it. In fact, you may have even resented the imposition on your time and energy. Or you may have even flat out refused to do it or come up with some excuse as to why you couldn’t.

However, if the person asking you was someone you cared about, someone you truly loved, you may have not felt confident that you were the right person for the job or you may have even felt afraid, but you said “yes” anyway. When we love someone, we are willing to go out of our way for him or her. We are even willing to risk our health and safety to protect them. Love makes what is  difficult, easy. It makes the impossible, possible.

In today’s gospel, Mary finds herself in just such a situation. She is told by the angel Gabriel that she will be the mother of the Messiah. Saint Luke tells us that she is “greatly troubled” not only because an angel has appeared to her but because of what he is asking of her. She feels confused, “pondering what sort of greeting this must be?” In fact, the greeting “The Lord is with you”, in the Old Testament, meant that God was about to ask something momentous of you, that you were going to play a role that would be important for the people of Israel. Mary’s heart must have been racing and her mind spinning as she thought,  “Why me?”.

Despite her fear and confusion, Mary says, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Mary is able to say “yes” to the angel because of her love for God. She trusts that if he has chosen her, it is for a good reason. Her great faith allows her to put herself into God’s hands so that His will could be accomplished in her. Her great love and faith made what seemed difficult, easy and what was impossible, possible.

The fact is that Mary was chosen by God not at the moment of the angel’s appearance to her but at the time of her conception. Before the beginning of time, it was our Heavenly Father’s plan to create Mary as the perfect mother for His Son, Jesus. He protected her from the corruption of sin so that she could enjoy all the virtues and graces necessary to raise Jesus to be our Saviour. Because she was free from sin, she was able to sacrifice her own plans for the future when Gabriel announced God’s plan to her. The courage and strength that was cultivated in her through love made it possible for her to accompany Jesus through much of His ministry and, ultimately, to stand at the foot of the cross supporting Him with her presence and praying for mercy on those who killed Him. After He rose from the dead, she continued to support and witness to His disciples as they proclaimed the good news in the power of the Holy Spirit. She continues to serve us as our mother in faith, supporting us with her prayers.

God gave Mary this incredible grace also as a sign of hope for us. Mary is a human being just as we are. The graces she enjoyed were given to her so that she could take on the singular role she would perform as the mother of Jesus and as our mother. Likewise, we can trust that God will give us whatever we need for the role we are called to take on. God promises to provide us with whatever we need to do His will, just as He did for Mary. If we offer our hearts to Him in love and put our trust in Him, we will discover that what seems difficult will be easy and what seems impossible will now be possible for us.

This Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary also teaches us what God’s ultimate plan for us is. Like Mary, He wants to free each of us from sin. Saint Paul teaches us in today’s second reading that “[God] chose us in [Jesus], before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” God’s ultimate desire for us is not only to avoid sin but to do good. It is not only that we should avoid hurting others but that we should love them. That means that, whatever sin we are struggling with, whatever weakness that keeps us from doing the good we truly desire to do, will one day be conquered through God’s love if we entrust ourselves to Him daily.

Through Mary, God brought our Savior, Jesus, into the world. He desires the same for us - to bring Jesus into the world through our service to others. The Blessed Virgin Mary serves as an example of love and trust for us. She serves as our hope that, one day, the wounds of sin will be healed in us. And she serves us as our mother, praying for us and encouraging us to follow her Son, Jesus, and to do whatever He asks of us, just as she did.

Fully Human - Fully Saved

During the 1980’s, the rock band, Human League, had a hit song called “Human”. The refrain of the song was:

                                    I’m only human

                                    Of flesh and blood I’m made.

                                    Human,

                                    Born to make mistakes.

As fellow human beings, we can all relate to the words of this song. Throughout our lives we often experience ourselves as weak and imperfect. We sometimes want to do the right thing but find it to be too difficult. Sadly, many times we desire to do what we know is wrong. Despite our good intentions, we make mistakes and hurt one another. In our humanity, we experience brokenness and vulnerability.

However, that is not what God intended for us from the beginning. Early in the Book of Genesis,  from which today’s first reading is taken, we read that God made man and woman to be the pinnacle of His creation, with dominion over all the earth. Whereas God called His other creatures “good”, He called Adam “very good”. We were created for immortality, to walk intimately with God and to live harmoniously with one another and with all living things.

What happened? We chose a different path. We disobeyed God. We fell under the illusion that separating ourselves from our Creator would make us freer and more powerful. Instead, sin has only weakened our nature, darkened our ability to reason and harmed our relationships. By choosing to disobey God, we have fallen from the heights of glory He intended for us.

Though we turned our backs on our Creator, He did not abandon us. He sent us a new Adam - Jesus Christ. Jesus is fully human as was the first Adam but also fully divine as the angel Gabriel announces to Mary in today’s gospel: “Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” Because Jesus never sinned, He came to show us what it means to be fully human as God intended. We are not most human when we sin. Rather, we are most human when we are close to God and when we serve one another out of love. By restoring our friendship with God, Jesus empowers us to overcome our fallen natures and live truly good lives.

Not only has our Creator sent us a new Adam. He has also given us a new Eve - The Blessed Virgin Mary. Today we celebrate the mystery of faith that she was kept free from the sin of Adam from the moment of her conception. Like Eve, Mary was created sinless. However, unlike Eve she never disobeyed God.  Her Immaculate Conception teaches us that God wants to restore all humanity to the goodness and glory we enjoyed before the Fall. While Eve is “the mother of all the living”, Mary is the mother of all those who are restored to friendship with God through Jesus Christ.

And so, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary gives us hope. We continue to be weak and imperfect human beings. However, by the grace of God, our human nature can be healed and elevated. Whenever we hear the word of God with faith, it empowers us to turn away from sin and to practice good works. Whenever we receive the sacraments with devotion, we are strengthened to love God and neighbor. By the work of the Holy Spirit in our souls, we become truly good people despite our human weakness. God accomplished this in Mary at the moment of her conception. If we give our lives to Him, He will also accomplish it in us over time and, then, perfectly after our death.

Without God, we are merely “made of flesh and blood” and “born to make mistakes”. With God, we are raised up above our fallen nature to be truly good people capable of great things. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary gives us that hope - that God intends to restore us to the glory Adam and Eve enjoyed before the Fall. Through her prayers, may we strive everyday for perfection and goodness in the hope that we too will one day be free from sin and stand before our Creator endowed with all the glory He intended us to enjoy from the beginning. 

Full Of Saving Grace

If there is one Catholic doctrine that many people find difficult to understand, including some Catholics, it is our belief about the special place that the Blessed Virgin Mary has in the history of salvation.

Why do we hold Mary in such esteem? The first answer to that question would be that, because we love Jesus, it is natural that we would also love His mother. If I have a special love and friendship for someone, it would be natural that I would also love his or her mother. Can you imagine ever being friends with someone who did not also like your mother? Therefore, it is only right that we who seek to imitate Jesus in all things would also seek to imitate his special love and affection for His mother.

The most significant reason, however, that we love Mary is that she said “yes” to being the mother of our Savior. God chose her to be the mother of Jesus. He sent Gabriel to ask her consent and permission to allow His Son to be conceived within her. Without her “yes”, without her saying, “May it be done to me according to your word”, Jesus would not have come into this world. Therefore, she has an indispensable role in the story of our salvation.

We also believe that God chose Mary to be the mother of Jesus from the beginning of time. When she herself was conceived, our Heavenly Father prepared her for her special role by already freeing her from sin. That is the mystery we celebrate today, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Sin has never touched the woman God chose from the beginning to be the mother of His Son. From the first moment of her life, she never offended God by her thoughts, words or deeds. Though we can assume that she was tempted at times as Jesus was, she never fell to the tricks of the devil. In all things she remained pure and immaculate.

Christians throughout the centuries have come to believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary in part because of the angel’s words to her which we hear in today’s gospel. When Gabriel speaks to our Lady, he calls her “full of grace.” These words have been understood to mean that Mary was so full of grace, so full of the life of God, that there was no room for sin in her. Just as a glass that is full of water would have no room for any other liquid, so Mary was so full of God’s goodness, truth and love that there was no room for pride, greed, hate or any of the other vices that we so easily fall prey to.

Those who do not believe that Mary was preserved from sin from the moment of her conception say that it would mean that she did not need Jesus to die for her. If she never sinned then she would not need the blood of Christ poured out for us on the cross for her salvation. However, this is not the case.

This is the way early Christians first explained the mystery of how a sinless Virgin Mary would need Jesus to die on the cross for her. They gave the example of someone falling into a hole who could not get out. If I come along and see that person  and help him to get out of the hole, then I have saved him. Now let us say that another person comes along and I stop him before he has a chance to fall in the hole. I have also saved that person but in a different way. The first person I saved by helping him out of the hole while the second person I saved by keeping him from falling in the hole in the first place.

The same is true with Mary. All of us who have sinned are saved by having our sins forgiven. Mary, on the other hand, is saved by being preserved from sinning in the first place. This beautiful grace that preserved her from sin is not something she earned or accomplished on her own, but a gift of God given to her for the special task of being the mother of Jesus.

We gather here today, therefore, to celebrate Mary, full of grace, preserved from sin from the moment of her conception. We celebrate also because of the promise given to us that we can also experience victory over sin in our own lives. While we cannot claim to have never sinned, we can, through God’s grace and Our Lady’s intercession, overcome temptation, break bad habits and grow in virtue. Though we cannot avoid falling into the hole of sin, God offers a hand to lead us out and keep us from falling back in. We hear that promise in today’s second reading, “....he chose us...before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.”

Therefore, because Mary said “yes” to being the mother of Jesus, we have the forgiveness of sins. The same Holy Spirit who hovered over Mary to conceive Jesus in her womb lives in us, filling us with grace and strengthening us to avoid sin and choose good. That is why we gather to celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary in her Immaculate Conception. In her and through her God has won the victory over sin. God wants to do great things in our lives as well. Therefore, we look to Mary to be our inspiration and to pray for us as we strive to live holy lives, to say “yes” to all the ways God calls us to serve Him and to look to heaven for the ultimate victory over death.

A Worthy Vessel

If you are thinking of giving someone you love a very special Christmas gift and have thousands of dollars to spend, you might consider getting a bottle of Louis XIII.

Louis XIII is one of the world’s most expensive cognacs selling for over $2,000 a bottle. It is made in France and aged in oak barrels that are several hundred years old. Because of its reputation as one of the best cognacs available, older bottles can sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction. If you do not have $2,000 to spend on a bottle of Louis XIII, don’t worry. You can get a snifter of it at any restaurant for only $250.

One of the reasons that this cognac is so prized throughout the world is the beautiful crystal decanter it is sold in. Just the empty bottle sells for over $200. Some special edition decanters have even sold for over $500 at auction. It is natural that a cognac that is so expensive would be sold in a bottle that is worthy of it. It is also natural that the connoisseurs who value this cognac so highly would also value the bottle it comes in.

Now, if cognacs and fine wines are distributed in beautiful containers, how fitting is it that the mother of Our Lord, who carried in her womb the Saviour of the World, should herself be the most worthy and purest of vessels? Because she would carry Jesus within her, God preserved Mary from sin from the moment of her conception. Our Heavenly Father fashioned her into a beautiful, stainless vessel to bear His Son.

When the angel Gabriel greets Mary at the Annunciation, he calls her “full of grace”. We repeat the angel’s greeting every time we pray the Hail Mary. She is so full of grace that there is no room for anything else. There is no room for sin, no room for hate, no room for evil. There is only room for Jesus. And as a bottle allows us to see what is within it, so Mary allows us to see Jesus within her. The clearer the bottle is, the better we see what is within it. Just so, our Lord shines through Mary more clearly than any other person in history because she was the purest creature to ever live.

Because of this, we can learn from Mary what it means to love Jesus. No one loved or knew Him better than she did. And because Jesus gave her to us to be His mother, she loves us and wants to introduce us to Jesus. In all our struggles with temptation and the burdens of life, we can turn to her for help as we would to our own mothers. We can be assured that she will bring our needs to her Son for us. We can also be assured that Jesus will not deny any request made to Him by His mother.

This feast day is also an opportunity to examine ourselves. We also have Christ living within us through faith and baptism. Is our soul a worthy dwelling place for the Saviour of the World? Do we strive everyday to avoid sin with God’s help so that we remain a pure vessel for Jesus? And can others see Jesus within us? Jesus was born of Mary so that He could offer us the forgiveness of our sins and the power to live a good and holy life. He has also given us His Mother to serve as an example and to pray for us. We can be assured, then, that God will make us pure and holy if we will only entrust our lives into His loving hands.

Today we join with Christians throughout the world in celebrating the power of God who preserved Mary from sin from the moment of her conception. We also celebrate His promise that through the death and resurrection of Jesus we too one day will be free from sin and filled with grace, love and joy. The Holy Spirit is at work in us even now to fulfill that promise by purifying us so that we may be worthy vessels to carry Jesus within us as Mary was. As we approach Jesus today in the Eucharist, let us embrace Him as wholeheartedly as Mary did and ask Him to make our souls a worthy place for Him to dwell. Then we will experience God working in powerful ways in our lives as He did in the life of Mary.

Original Beauty

What is original sin?

It is the wound in our soul that we inherited from the first human beings, Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve were created by God without sin. Enjoying a perfect friendship with God, they spoke to Him face to face. With all of creation at their disposal, they wanted for nothing. They lived in perfect harmony with God, with one another and with all of nature.

However, as we hear in the first reading, our first parents disobeyed God. When they heard the serpent tell them that they would be like God knowing the difference between good and evil, they were quick to want that power. We hear the heartbreak in God’s voice when He discovers their sin and asks Eve, “How could you do such a thing?” By disobeying, they refused God’s love and chose something other than the Paradise that had been created for them. Therefore, they were expelled from the garden and were forced to work for what had been freely given to them before. The harmony they enjoyed with their Creator, between themselves and with nature was damaged.

Each of us who have inherited our human nature from Adam and Eve also have inherited the wound of that original sin. We feel torn within ourselves because we want to do good but find ourselves choosing evil. Many times we are even confused about what is good and what is evil. Though we want to live in harmony with others, we find ourselves preferring selfishness and greed. And rather than making God the center of our lives, we want to put ourselves at the center of the universe and make our Heavenly Father serve us rather than the other way around.

In today’s feast, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we celebrate God’s first step in redeeming us. Like Adam and Eve, Mary was conceived without the wound of original sin. However, unlike Adam and Eve, Mary did not disobey God but placed herself totally in the service of His saving plan. Because she was not wounded with original sin, she was not inclined to selfishness or greed and so was free to say “yes” to being the mother of the Savior. Because of that “yes”, Jesus Christ - the Son of the Most High - could be born to save us. Mary, therefore, became the New Eve, the mother of all those saved by her son, Jesus Christ.

Though we were not blessed with the same grace of being saved from the wound of original sin, we still celebrate this feast because it proclaims a great truth. God is able not only to forgive us of our sin but to give us the power to overcome our sinful inclinations. Through the blood Jesus shed on the cross, our sins are blotted out and by the Holy Spirit He breathed out upon us on Pentecost we receive the power to live good and holy lives. As Saint Paul teaches us in today’s second reading, our Heavenly Father has bestowed us with “every spiritual blessing in the heavens”....so that we might be “holy and without blemish before him.” Though we know that we are weak and sinful people, we are not left without hope. The same God who preserved Mary from the wound of original sin and who sent Jesus to take upon Himself the guilt of our sin, can free us from our sinfulness and teach us to live with freedom and peace.

By God’s power, Mary was the first to enjoy that renewed friendship with God. However, it is also offered to us. All we have to do is say “yes” as she did and abandon ourselves to His plan for our lives. As Mary shows us, it will not be easy, but it is our only hope to live meaningful and hope-filled lives.

So not only do we celebrate what God did in Mary’s life, we also seek to imitate it in our own. Not only is Mary given to us as an example, she is also in heaven praying for us. In our weakness, in our struggles, in our despair, we can turn to her and ask her to bring our prayers to her son, Jesus, who never fails to listen to her.

God, in His great mercy, has taken the wound we all bear from original sin and made it a blessing for us by sending us so great a Savior and giving us so beautiful a mother.

The New Eve

The Scriptures offer us two women to reflect upon today.

The first woman, Eve, is created by God free of all sin. She enjoyed all the pleasures of paradise, including an intimate friendship with God. She saw God face to face and spoke with him as directly as we speak to each other. Yet with all those blessings, she allowed the serpent to place the suspicion in her heart that God was holding something back from her. Why would God tell her not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? He must be hiding something from her. With all the abundance that nature could provide surrounding her, she became fascinated with what she could not have. She lost trust in the God who created her and disobeyed him. Then she lured her husband, Adam, to do the same.

We know what the tragic consequences were. Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Paradise. The fruits of the earth which had been in Paradise in abundance could now only be harvested by the intense labor of plowing the ground, planting the seeds and waiting for the harvest. We lost our ability to see God and speak to him face to face. Every type of evil entered our world - sickness, natural disasters, hatred and death.

To this day we suffer the consequences of Eve's fatal choice. Most especially, we carry within ourselves the same disobedience. Despite all the blessings God showers upon us, we still fail to trust him. We still are tempted to believe that our plan is better than God's plan and that our will is superior to his. As a result, we continue to hurt one another, to poison our environment and to suffer from the despair caused by our separation from God.

Happily the disobedience of Eve is not the end of the story. For another woman comes upon the scene, a woman like Eve whom God created free of all sin. This woman did not have the pleasures of Paradise around her. She did not see God face to face nor did she talk to him directly as Eve did. Yet she awaited the salvation he promised with a lively faith and hope. When the angel Gabriel appears to her, she becomes troubled and confused. She is full of questions. Although she does not fully understand God's plan for her and although it would mean a big change in her own plans, she says "yes" to becoming the mother of the Savior. Unlike Eve who was suspicious of God's plan, Mary entrusted herself fully to him. And, as a result, Jesus our Lord and God was born to us.

Just as Eve's disobedience brought evil into the world, Mary's "yes" ushered in untold blessings. Because Mary offered her body to God, Jesus could take on our human nature, becoming a man like us. It was because of her obedience that Jesus could suffer and die to save us from our sins. While we must never forget that it is Jesus alone who saves and sanctifies us, none of it would have been possible without Mary's cooperation. And so we rightly call her not only the mother of Jesus, but the mother of all believers because she was the first to believe in him and the first to offer herself in service to the gospel.

Eve, our first mother, brought despair into our world. Mary, our mother by faith, brought new hope.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception is one of the few times during the year when the Church requires us to gather for Mass on a day other than Sunday. We interrupt our regular schedules because this truth of faith is so important to us as followers of Christ. God chose Mary from the beginning of time to be the mother of Jesus. From the moment of her conception, he purified her from the stain which Eve's disobedience left on all our souls. In that way, her body would be a worthy temple for the Son of God. Though we have not been given the tremendous gifts of grace which God showered upon Mary, we can still hold on to the hope she offers us. God has chosen each of us from the beginning of time to provide a service for him that no one else can offer. From the moment of our conception, he gave us all we could ever need to fulfill his plan for our lives. Like Mary, all we need do is entrust ourselves to him with complete faith and confidence. Then the strength to do his will and the grace to follow his plan will be ours in abundance. And we can be sure that our mother, Mary, will be praying for us every step of the way as she points us to her Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Perfect Vessel

If you are thinking of giving someone you love a very special Christmas gift and have thousands of dollars to spend, you might consider getting a bottle of Louis XIII.

Louis XIII is one of the world’s most expensive cognacs selling for over $2,000 a bottle. It is made in France and aged in oak barrels that are several hundred years old. Because of its reputation as one of the best cognacs available, older bottles can sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction. If you do not have $2,000 to spend on a bottle of Louis XIII, don’t worry. You can get a glass of it at a restaurant for only $250.

One of the reasons that this cognac is so prized throughout the world is the beautiful crystal decanter it is sold in. Just the empty bottle sells for over $200. Some special edition decanters have even sold for over $500 at auction. It is natural that a cognac that is so expensive would be sold in a bottle that is worthy of it. It is also natural that the connoisseurs who value this cognac so highly would also value the bottle it comes in.

Now, if cognacs and fine wines are distributed in beautiful containers, how fitting is it that the mother of Our Lord, who carried in her womb the Saviour of the World, should herself be the most worthy and purest of vessels? Because she would carry Jesus within her, God preserved Mary from sin from the moment of her conception. Our Heavenly Father fashioned her into a beautiful, stainless vessel to bear His Son.

When the angel Gabriel greets Mary at the Annunciation, he calls her “full of grace”. We repeat the angel’s greeting every time we pray the Hail Mary. She is so full of grace that there is no room for anything else. There is no room for sin, no room for hate, no room for evil. There is only room for Jesus. And as a bottle allows us to see what is within it, so Mary allows us to see Jesus within her. The clearer the bottle is, the better we see what is within it. Just so, our Lord shines through Mary more clearly than any other person in history because she was the purest creature to ever live.

Because of this, we can learn from Mary what it means to love Jesus. No one loved or knew Him better than she did. And because Jesus gave her to us to be His mother, she loves us and wants to introduce us to Jesus. In all our struggles with temptation and the burdens of life, we can turn to her for help as we would to our own mothers. We can be assured that she will bring our needs to her Son for us. We can also be assured that Jesus will not deny any request made to Him by His mother.

This feast day is also an opportunity to examine ourselves. We also have Christ living within us through faith and baptism. Is our soul a worthy dwelling place for the Saviour of the World? Do we strive everyday to avoid sin with God’s help so that we remain a pure vessel for Jesus? And can others see Jesus within us? Jesus was born of Mary so that He could offer us the forgiveness of our sins and the power to live a good and holy life. He has also given us His Mother to serve as an example and to pray for us. We can be assured, then, that God will make us pure and holy if we will only entrust our lives into His loving hands.

Today we join with Christians throughout the world in celebrating the power of God who preserved Mary from sin from the moment of her conception. We also celebrate His promise that through the death and resurrection of Jesus we too one day will be free from sin and filled with grace, love and joy. The Holy Spirit is at work in us even now to fulfill that promise by purifying us so that we may be worthy vessels to carry Jesus within us as Mary was. As we approach Jesus today in the Eucharist, let us embrace Him as wholeheartedly as Mary did and ask Him to make our souls a worthy place for Him to dwell. Then we will experience God working in powerful ways in our lives as He did in the life of Mary.