Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 8, 2016

THE IMMAC­U­LATE CON­CEP­TION
Of the BLESSED VIR­GIN MARY
(Patronal Feast Day
of the Unit­ed States of America)

A lit­tle his­to­ry of this dog­ma and litur­gi­cal Feast Day in the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion might be in order. Pope Pious IX, in agree­ment with the Catholic Church’s first Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, made offi­cial a long-held belief that Mary, the moth­er of Jesus, was con­ceived in her mother’s womb with­out the effects of, or in any way pres­ence of, sin or stain of sin. This belief had an up-and-down his­to­ry of accep­tance and rejec­tion through­out its his­to­ry. Some monas­ter­ies and dio­ce­ses chose to cel­e­brate this devo­tion while oth­ers actu­al­ly for­bade it. There are writ­ings in the ear­ly cen­turies of the Church which attempt to explain this mys­tery from var­i­ous aspects. Is it based in Scrip­ture? In our First Read­ing for today’s Eucharis­tic litur­gy there are the famil­iar vers­es about God’s promise that there would be a block­age between a “woman” and the ser­pent or sym­bol of evil. The first woman, Eve, tast­ed sin, the sec­ond woman would not.

The Gospel for today is known as the Annun­ci­a­tion, and Mary, a woman, is greet­ed as “full of grace”. This phrase has been used also as a scrip­tur­al proof. I won­der if Gabriel had said, “Hail Sin­less One from the moment of your soul’s enter­ing your-bod­i­ly sub­stance”, would it have made this mys­tery any eas­i­er for accep­tance. Would Mary have under­stood any more clear­ly? We are deal­ing with bib­li­cal and not bio­graph­i­cal his­to­ry. We love sound-bite clar­i­ty which leads us to cer­tain­ty and agree­ment. We are left with the same ver­bal response as Mary gave to Gabriel, “How can this be?” My ques­tion is “Why can this not be?”

There have to be doubts and ques­tions and mys­ter­ies and fears in order to have faith, trust and love. It’s just the way of things. Vir­ginal births, bod­i­ly assump­tion into heav­en, being Moth­er of God, are strange and impos­si­ble accord­ing to our categories.

I was lis­ten­ing recent­ly to a man who told me that he once was Catholic, but left that com­mu­ni­ty, because of “Man-made beliefs.” I asked him which ones both­ered him the most. He replied that the one about not eat­ing ham­burg­ers on Fri­day and the one about ador­ing Mary. He said he basi­cal­ly didn’t like dog­mas of any kind. I knew that was going to be a short con­ver­sa­tion; no sound-bites availing.

I am writ­ing this the day before the nation­al elec­tion here in the Unit­ed States. There have been all kinds of dog­mat­ic state­ments by all kinds of can­di­dates which are tak­en as truth by those who want to take them so. Those who reject them as false do so with their facts and counter-state­ments. I am won­der­ing how many vot­ers change their choic­es because of stat­ed facts or chal­lenges. There must be ambi­gu­i­ty for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of choice. Mary did not have a choice to be born or con­ceived with­out sin. She did not have a vote about being enrolled in the “first cen­sus” nor giv­ing birth in a sta­ble. She did not have an option about stand­ing at the foot of the cross. She did have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to say “yes” to the mys­tery of her life. Her obe­di­ence, her lis­ten­ing, her eat­ing of the angel­ic apple of invi­ta­tion began the final project of God’s com­plet­ing cre­ation. The old Adam-and-Eve part­ner­ship is rep­re­sent­ed and refig­ured in the new Mary-and-Jesus duet. Adam hid him­self in shame, because he knew him­self to be naked. Jesus clothed Him­self in shame­less flesh which he had received from the shame­less body and soul of His moth­er, Mary. Both sang the song of trust and grate­ful accep­tance to the invi­ta­tions to their fac­ing the fears, doubts, and ques­tions in their lives of immac­u­late receptions.