Homily for Solemnity of Immaculate Conception

Homily for the Solemnity
of the Immaculate Conception

Dec. 8, 2020
Collect
Eph 3: 1-6, 11-12
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“By the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, O God, you prepared a worthy dwelling place for your Son” (Collect).

Window, St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church,

Fredericksburg, Va.

Today we celebrate the wondrous work of God, who by the victory of Jesus Christ on the cross has totally vanquished sin.  Christ’s mastery over the evil inflicted upon humanity by the malice of the Devil and the foolish choice of our 1st parents is so complete that no trace of that evil was permitted to touch Mary of Nazareth, that most favored woman, that woman chosen “before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before him” (Eph 1:4).

In a theological sense, it wasn’t necessary that the Messiah’s mother be completely sinless.  But, to use a word the Fathers like, it was “fitting” that God make her so from the very start of her existence, not at some later point as the Holy Spirit does to us thru Baptism.

We’ve all seen the labels printed on alcoholic beverages and cigarette packages, warning pregnant women that those products could harm the babes in their womb; some form of physical, material poison might seep from mother to unborn child.  How fitting that no spiritual poison, no trace of sin, should be in Mary’s spiritual bloodstream, so to speak, even remotely to be transmitted to her unborn Son.

The Church takes care to teach that this superabundance of grace in Mary wasn’t her own doing but her Son’s, in anticipation.  The Prayer over the Gifts will use a technical word—one you’ll never find on an SAT—to describe the grace given to Mary:  “prevenient,” the grace that came beforehand, before Christ died and rose for our salvation.  “You preserved her from every stain by virtue of the death of your Son, which you foresaw,” the Collect stated.  God made that wondrous grace available to Mary from her 1st moment of existence.

No wonder the Psalmist can acclaim, “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done wondrous deeds; his right hand has won victory for him” (98:1):  total victory over sin and over the mortal enemy of the human race, the great Deceiver who promised, “You’ll be like gods” (Gen 3:5), whereas, of course, only grace touches us with divinity.

The victory that Christ wrought beforehand in the Virgin Mary foreshadows the victory he’s working in us thru his sacred mysteries, thru word and sacrament and all the ways in which his grace touches us, ever so slowly transforms us, day by day by day rendering us holy and spotless images of himself, fit to be adopted as children of God, according to God’s plan (cf. Eph 1:5).

We can’t celebrate Mary’s feastday without noting its meaning for the Salesian Family.  Dec. 8 is a date that Don Bosco marked with the greatest significance, the date that God chose for young, inexperienced Don Bosco to begin to gather poor and endangered youths; and later, a date on which other notable events in the life of the Oratory took place.  On 12/8/1844 Don Bosco blessed the Oratory’s 1st chapel in his rooms at Marchioness Barolo’s Rifugio.  Three years later, he opened his 2d oratory at Porta Nuova, dedicated to St. Aloysius.  After lightning had struck a building at the Oratory in 1861, Don Bosco erected a statue of Mary Immaculate on the spot as a lightning rod, which he blessed on Dec. 8.  On 12/8/1855 the Sodality of Mary Immaculate was founded at Mornese, out of which emerged eventually the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, to whom Don Bosco presented their official printed Constitutions on 12/8/1878.  On this date in 1885, Don Bosco announced in a letter to his Salesians that Fr. Rua was to be his vicar with the right of succession, by Leo XIII’s express will.

All such happenings in our Founder’s life were marks of the prevenient grace of God, God’s grace working for numberless future generations after 1841.

Last spring Priest magazine posed a question to its readers:  “What role does the Blessed Mother play in your priesthood?”  In May several responses were published, including this from Fr. Michael Quinn of Sausalito, Calif.:  “The Blessed Mother is the primary patron saint for priests.  I believe as a priest my goal is to seek to love Jesus as she did.  She knew and loved Jesus best on earth—with a pure heart.  This is my ideal.”  All of us can endorse that, including a brother.

Mary responded to God’s initiative with her famous—and necessary—“yes” to the destiny the Father planned for her.  So did Don Bosco.  Mary probably had to repeat her “yes” many times in her life—certainly at Calvary.  For sure, Don Bosco also had to repeat often his “yes” to God’s initiatives, not just on 12/8/1841.

“Yes” is also the secret of our holiness, “yes” to whatever God’s specific plan is for us, and to his ultimate plan that we, like Mary, should be “holy and without blemish” in his sight as he “accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will, so that we might exist for the praise of his glory” (Eph 1:11-12).