Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Lectionary: 689

The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living.

Seeing this incredible creature for the first time, Adam cried out in ecstatic delight, "Woman!" But he knew nothing about this particular woman. She was only "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."

Now we know that defining another person by one's own likes, dislikes, and limited self-knowledge invites only trouble. When he discovered the woman had a mind of her own and could make decisions for herself Adam complained to God about her, "The woman whom you gave me...."

He was willing to blame anyone but himself for what had happened. Which didn't help the situation at all.

Finally, with experience and wisdom born of sorrow, Adam gave his wife a new and beautiful name, "Eve." The word means living "because she became the mother of all the living."

Today we celebrate the mother of those living in the Holy Spirit. Our sad experience has also given us a certain wisdom. We realize we cannot live without the life of God moving within us.

Mary's story does not begin with her Immaculate Conception. Rather, that is the culmination of God's plans since the beginning. We sense something wonderful in God's curse upon the serpent:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

They will strike at your head,

while you strike at their heel.

While Eve seems to be the woman in question, Christians from ancient times have heard this vague threat as the protoevangelium, the first hint of a coming Messiah. He would be born of a woman and he would crush the serpent, casting Satan into the fiery furnace. God's statement at this critical moment could not be a casual aside about ophidiophobia!

Our Catholic tradition finds many other Old Testament references to the Spirit that would become, in the daughter of Saints Ann and Joachim, the "Grace of Immaculation," as Saint Maximilian Kolbe described it. More than a simple state, this grace in the Virgin grows from grace to grace as she becomes more and more worthy to be the Mother of God. This purifying grace appears in Sarah, Rachel, Ruth, Esther, Judith, and many unnamed women of the Bible. There was the Shunammite woman who demanded that Elijah restore her son to life.  And the Maccabean Widow who encouraged her seven sons to die heroically for the faith.

Immaculation blesses the world with the presence of Mary. It is a blessing that goes with us and welcomes us into heaven. No one can imagine how the grace of God might grow in us, or how we shall become better persons. But the communion of saints and the motherhood of Mary draws us onward to glory.

It is good to meditate on this mystery when our world seems sullied by a fatal rot. Despite the fearfulness of our present situation, we place our confidence in the mother of all the living.