Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Homily for the Solemnity
of the Immaculate Conception

Dec. 9, 2024
Eph 1: 3-6, 11-12
Salesian HS sophomores, New Rochelle

“God chose us to be holy and without blemish before him” (Eph 1: 4).

Every can of beer, every bottle of booze sold in the U.S. has to carry a 2-part warning label.  The 1st warning reads, “According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects.”  One of the mandatory rotating advisories on tobacco products is similar.  It’s scientifically demonstrable that mothers pass along to their unborn children more than DNA; elements of whatever is circulating thru their bodily systems is part of the transferal.

Stained glass
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

The Church over many centuries of reflection on the mother of Jesus understood something similar in the spiritual realm.  If all human parents pass on to their children, not physically but in some mysterious way, original sin and its effects, then logically the mother of the Savior should have done likewise.  But it’s inconceivable that Jesus, who was born to conquer sin, should even for an instant have been ruled by sin.  So it was fitting that God should have arranged otherwise, that he should have so prepared the woman he had chosen to be mother of the Redeemer that she had no hint of sin to pass on to her Son.  The opening prayer (collect) of Mass neatly summarizes this:  “Father, you prepared the Virgin Mary to be the worthy mother of your Son.”

There’s a never-ending warfare between mankind and the powers of evil.  Evil affects each of us who are the children of the first woman, and at times we wonder whether there’s any hope of victory.

The Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Mother means that the redemptive act of Christ has begun.  It’s a celebration of Christ’s victory over sin, the victory of one woman’s Son over the power of evil.  There’s already life, the fullness of life, the divine life of Christ’s grace, in the womb of Jesus’ mother.

Does it boggle your mind that anyone who is fully human, as Mary was, could be sinless?  You and I don’t know anyone who’s without sin.  In the Immaculate Conception, our faith tells us the grace of Christ is effective; it does defeat the sinfulness of the human race.  If we can’t believe that the grace of Jesus Christ overcame sin in Mary, how can we believe his grace touched our lives in Baptism?  We’d still be in sin and always will be.  Either his grace can save us, or it can’t.  Either it can be totally victorious over evil, or there’s no victory over evil.  Mary’s Immaculate Conception, then, is an anticipation of our own Baptism and life in Christ.  It’s an anticipation of the last day of our lives, when, if we say “yes” to Christ as Mary did when she told the angel, “I’m the Lord’s servant; may it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), we’ll be totally submitted to God’s will for us.  That’ll be the day when Christ makes us “holy and without blemish” before God and our salvation will be complete.

Stained glass
(Church of the Holy Savior, Bruges)