Homily for Solemnity of Immaculate Conception

Homily for the Solemnity
of the Immaculate Conception

Dec. 8, 2006

Gen 3: 9-15, 20
Luke 1: 26-38
Eph 1: 3-6, 11-12
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle, N.Y.

Altho I preached on the feast (at Nativity Parish in Washington, D.C.), I did so without a written text.  I offer my readers this older reflection on Mary and the Good News of the Savior.

“The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living” (Gen 3: 20).

The source in Genesis identified as the Yahwist is a master storyteller.  Our reading today offers only a fragment of his narrative of the Fall, but we all remember the rest:  the serpent tempting the woman, her tempting the man, their eyes opening, their hiding from YHWH with whom they used to walk familiarly in the garden of pleasures.

Our passage shows the man and the woman both trying to duck the blame for their actions.  So true to life!  (When we were kids, didn’t we do that?  Don’t some adults still do it?)  And we have the 1st part of YHWH’s judgment, wherein he decrees perpetual enmity between mankind and serpentkind.  The scholars tell us that the serpent represented evil in ancient Near Eastern symbology (to use the word that Dan Brown seems to have coined in the DaVinci Code).  Thus the perpetual enmity bespeaks the unending battle of humanity to resist evil and choose God’s plan.  The Fathers of the Church saw, further, the victory of the Messiah in the woman’s offspring crushing the serpent’s head, conquering evil and the death penalty that went along with our sinfulness.

Certainly the story ends on an optimistic note, whether or not that was the intent of the Yahwist or of the final editor of the text:  the woman becomes mother of all the living.  She who thru her disobedience was so instrumental in bringing death into the world—it’s not ALL her fault, but neither is that bumper sticker correct that grouses, “Eve was framed”—she is also a life-giver.

From another master storyteller, Luke, we hear of another woman, the one whom the Fathers would come to call the new Eve.  Mary of Nazareth became the new Eve, the new mother of all the living, because she brought forth the Lord of Life himself, the one who would truly crush the serpent’s head.  Unlike the first Eve, when God sought Mary’s cooperation she gave it willingly:  “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Mary’s yes undoes Eve’s no.  Whatever God might have done, out of all the possibilities for redemption, she enabled this plan, so that all whom God had “destined for adoption to himself thru Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace” (Eph 1:5-6) might in fact be adopted thru him whom she would name Jesus (Luke 1: 31)—“YHWH saves”—and might for all ages praise God’s grace.

Everlasting praise of his grace was, presumably, “God’s vast eternal plan” (to quote that great theologian Tevye) that Eve—and her husband—failed to go along with.  And they lost God’s favor, their own innocence, the blessings of the garden of pleasures.  Paul, who (as you know quite well) is not a storyteller, assures us that the plan is now back in place.  He “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,” choosing us “in accord with the purpose of … his will, so that we might exist for the praise of his glory” (Eph 1:3,11-12).

The glory of God’s grace is restored, first of all, in her who will become the mother of all the living, the mother of Life himself.  However you translate the angel’s greeting to Mary—“full of grace,” “so highly favored,” “you who enjoy God’s favor”—it speaks of a special relationship between her and the Most High whose power will overshadow but has, indeed, already chosen her “before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before him” (Eph 1:4).  The 1st Eve was so at the foundation of the world, but failed.  The 2d Eve is so, for God is creating the world anew:  “whoever is in Christ is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17).  She is new and beautiful and perfect, created for Christ.  And she says, “Yes!”

Not once, but repeatedly.  At least so we must conclude by reading between the lines as we read of her in the all too few references to her in the rest of the Gospels.  How much we regret that the Gospels are the announcement of the Good News from God in Christ Jesus, and not his biography, with lots of interesting biographical information about not only him but also about his mother and his disciples.  But it seems evident that she continued to go along with the “vast eternal plan,” even when the plan wasn’t evident.  On Calvary she stood by him not only literally but also metaphorically—ever the new, beautiful, and perfect disciple.

May her example and her prayers encourage and help us “to live in [God’s] presence without sin” (Collect) in this world and forever in eternity, when all things will truly have been made new.