RANSOMED BEFOREHAND FROM SIN.
December 8, 2021
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
Mary.
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me
according to your word.” (Lk 1:38)
A Yiddish proverb says: “No man suffers from another's sins
- he has enough of his own.” And a
German proverb adds: “God forgives sinners, otherwise His heaven would be
empty.”
In Adam, all mankind is made sinner. This is a kind of
genealogical and biological luggage we all carry. We all are children of Adam.
Therefore, heirs of the Adamic sin, called, the "original sin". We
are sinners by creation, debtors of disobedience. However, God who created us
for life and obedience formed the project to save us and restore us into our
original beauty, the beauty we had before the temptation and the falling. He
plans to send His Son, our Redeemer, to ransom us from sin.
To save sinners, God is about to share our humanity. He
cannot however be born of a sinner. Therefore, he predestined for himself a
blameless and sinless womb, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We are celebrating today, the solemnity of the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Dogmatic proclamation that
institutes this solemnity asserts that, “from the first moment of her
conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary was, by the singular grace and privilege of
Almighty God, and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of Mankind,
kept free from all stain of original sin.” (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, in 1854)
Mary was not immaculate by her special merits but for what
God meant her to be, to serve his purpose. Mary in that sense is the first
ransomed from sin to bear in her womb the Redeemer of mankind. The Immaculate
Conception of Mary is the aurora of human salvation, the light that announces
the new day. About her, the Catechism says, “To become the mother of the
Saviour, Mary "was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a
role." The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as
"full of grace". In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the
free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary
that she be wholly borne by God's grace.” CCC 490. She was kept Immaculate to
become the Mother of God.
The liturgy of today takes us back to the origin of all
things. In the first reading, we are brought to the origin of sin and human
damnation due to the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Here, in this passage, we
have many beautiful lessons about sin and its consequences on us. When we sin,
we feel ashamed to approach God. We find ourselves naked, and so we try to hide
from God’s sight. Sin reveals man to himself. That we are nothing but naked worms.
Another lesson is the human rejection of personal responsibility in front of
sin. Adam rejected his fault to Eve; Eve accused the serpent. We are never
responsible for our mistakes. It is always the fault of others.
God, however, does never give up on us. Though we disobey
him, he still wants to save us and gives us a new opportunity to amend. Thus, even
though he sent away Adam and Eve away from the Garden, he did not abandon them
unto themselves.
The original curse, the divine enmity between the woman and
the serpent, between her offspring and those of the serpent will be conjured in
the new creation, through Jesus, the Redeemer. If through the original
disobedience we have all become debtors of sin, through the obedience of one, a
new era of righteousness and salvation will be opened to us. In Mary, we have a
new beginning.
Mary's "Fiat voluntas Tua", in the Gospel of
today, announces the new dawn, the origin of a new life. Mary opened herself to
God’s will and accepted to be his instrument: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the
Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
Adam and Eve said "No" to God's will that was preventing
them from eating the fruit of the tree in the garden. And so, all were made
sinners. Mary says, "Fiat", and Salvation is made possible to all of us,
poor sinners. Here is the beautiful message of the Immaculate Conception. Mary consoles
Eve. She is the reparation of what was broken in disobedience. The serpent who
betrayed Eve is crushed by Mary bearing the Son of God.
We are not celebrating Mary for herself, but rather we are celebrating what God did through her for us. Mary leads us to her Son: “Ad Jesum per Mariam”. In her, it is all our humanity that is predestined, set free from sin beforehand. As Paul says to the Ephesians: “He chose us in Christ, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” We are sinners, but God wants us saved. So, in Jesus, we too were chosen, destined for salvation. And Mary was given that grace before all, to be God’s Mother and our Mother too.
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