Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

Lectionary: 636

Brothers and sisters:
We know that all things work for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose. 
For those he foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
so that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers.
And those he predestined he also called;
and those he called he also justified;
and those he justified he also glorified.

 

Given what I know, or seem to know, about the unfathomable complexity of ordinary life today, and the challenge to live at peace with the billions of people who crowd this planet, I find it thoroughly refreshing and delightful to contemplate Mary the Mother of God. As Saint Paul mapped the road to glory in his letter to the Colossians, he described her conception, nativity, life, and passage to eternity. She was foreknown, predestined, and conformed to the image of God’s son.  As the firstborn of many Christians she was called, justified, and glorified by the grace of her son Jesus.

The great medieval Franciscan John Duns Scotus explained to hesitant theologians about her title of The Immaculate Conception. Like every human being she needed redemption but it was preveniently granted to her at the very moment of her conception. Mary was saved from sin before Jesus’s birth by his sacrificial passion and death. The Lord God who abides in the past, present, and future has that authority; and, as the theologians said, God can, should, and did make it so. And so we call her “the Immaculate Conception,” the name by the mysterious woman of Lourdes.

Saint Paul describes the career of every Christian as we are called, justified, and glorified by the undeserved, unearned mercy of God.  We believe Mary has gone ahead of us in that way. Long before the theologians quarreled about it and Scotus presented a plausible argument that would be adopted by the church several centuries later, and long before Protestants protested the pious devotions they had learned in the Church, faithful and devout Christians had believed it of her. It only made sense that the Mother of God should be provided extraordinary blessings as she bore the infant who would become a man of suffering and accustomed to infirmity. 

As we reflect on the lives of Jesus, Mary, and the saints we realize that freedom is not free, and the life of grace is neither simple nor easy. Its demands are enormous; its costs are far beyond all reasonable budgets; and it can be no other way. We pray, especially as we labor through epic epidemics, that we might be found worthy of their company.