Homily for Solemnity of Immaculate Conception

Homily for the Solemnity of the
Immaculate Conception

Dec. 8, 2025
Eph 1: 3-6, 11-12
Luke 1: 26-38
Salesian HS juniors, New Rochelle

The Immaculate Conception (Velasquez)

“In love he destined us for adoption to himself thru Jesus Christ” (Eph 1: 4-5).

In the gospel reading, we heard how God sent an angel to invite the Virgin Mary to become the mother of the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:31-32), i.e., the Son of God.  God the Father had destined Mary in love to be his most special daughter, and paradoxically, to become the mother of his Son.  What a mystery, that she should be at the same time both mother and daughter of God Most High!

That’s not the only mystery we celebrate today.  The gospel is about Mary’s conceiving Jesus as her Son—that’s the mystery of the virginal conception of Jesus without any human participation, only the power of the Holy Spirit, as we heard (1:35).  The feast we’re celebrating today is Mary’s immaculate conception.  When she was conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Ann, in the normal way that children are conceived—her father was St. Joachim—unlike every other human person, she was conceived without original sin, without the stain imposed on all the rest of humanity (except Jesus), by the sinful choice made by our most remote ancestors.  That was the story told in our 1st reading (Gen 3:9-15,20).

In the opening prayer of the Mass, we noted that God preserved Mary “from every stain” so that she might be “a worthy dwelling” for his Son.  The Son of God deserved a perfectly holy mother, one without any trace of sin.

You and I know how remarkable that is.  We can scarcely go a day without committing some sin, some moral failure, in word, action, thought, or omission.

But God has a plan for that!  “In love he destined us for adoption to himself thru Jesus Christ.”  God’s love acting thru Christ can overcome our sins and, in the words of the opening prayer, “we too may be cleansed”; cleansed of our sins, we may become God’s beloved children.  Jesus does that for us if we allow him into our lives.  After the facts of sin, we can become immaculate by God’s love and forgiveness, and so join Jesus and Mary in heaven.  “Nothing will be impossible for God” (Luke 1:37).