And coming to her, he said, “Hail full of grace! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28).
With these words from the angel Gabriel, we can begin to understand the special and unique gift of grace that God bestowed upon Mary such that we are blessed each year to celebrate this magnificent Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary was conceived without sin and she remained not only a virgin all her life, but also sinless and “full of grace” all her life.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (492), echoes our second reading from St. Paul: “The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person ‘in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places’ and chose her ‘in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love’” (cf. Ephesians 1:3-4).
This special grace was bestowed upon Mary such that she could undo the sin of another who was created sinless: Eve. As we saw in our first reading from Genesis, Adam and Eve were created good, without sin, but both fell by disobeying God and bringing sin, suffering, and death into the world. The Church fathers and doctors saw in Mary, the new Eve. As St. Irenaeus of Lyons, (130-202 A.D.) wrote in his great work, Adversus Haereses, “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary.”
Mary’s, “yes”: “May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), and her continued “yes” to God’s will for the rest of her life, kept her full of the grace that God bestowed upon her from the moment of her conception. Adam and Eve fell when their trust in God was shaken by Satan’s temptation. Mary trusted God with Gabriel’s invitation even though she did not understand what was being asked of her. Her question to Gabriel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man” (Lk 1:34) was not a demand for proof, but a sincere seeking to understand what was being asked of her.
Mary embodied faith seeking understanding, though while she pondered, as St. Bernard of Clairvaux put it: “Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you… Abraham begs it, David begs it… this is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet… Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the Word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine Word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal word.”
When Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38), a weary world wounded by the sin of her first parents, exhaled with relief, for the long-awaited savior would now be conceived, born, and come to redeem what had been lost. Mary, in her obedience, loosed the knot of the Sin of Origin committed by Adam and Eve in their disobedience. Mary inmaculatus, Immaculate Mary, was blameless, conceived without sin, for this very moment in time so that of her free will she could say, “yes” and become the new Eve and her Son the new Adam.
Mary, help us to ponder your “yes”, that we may be willing to say “yes” and follow the will of God in all we think, say, and do. Help us to be obedient, to resist a knee jerk reaction to reject outright what we do not understand and choose instead to be open to the possibilities you make available to us that are beyond the realm of our senses and limitations alone. Help us to place our trust in God, Jesus, his Son, and the love of the Holy Spirit in all situations.
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Photo: Mary, side altar at the Mission Dolores Cathedral, San Francisco, October 7, 2019.
Quote of St. Bernard of Clairvaux from volume 1, Liturgy of the Hours, p. 345.
Spiritual Stepping Stones 