‘Those who
dislike any devotion to Mary are those who deny His Divinity or who find fault
with Our Lord because of what He says.’
These words
of the Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen remind us of an important
truth when we consider the Blessed Virgin Mary: she is always pointing to God –
it’s all about God and not about Mary. But, I hear you cry, we have come here
to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
surely it’s all got to be about her? Well I am sorry to disappoint you, but it
isn’t.
We are not
here today to celebrate a doctrine, or a philosophical concept, because that is
not what the church does. We celebrate a person, and through her, God. Mary,
the spotless vessel, through whose loving obedience our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ became incarnate and was born, for the salvation of all humanity, is
marked out for a life of perfect love and obedience. She becomes the first
Christian, the tabernacle, the Ark of the new covenant, the new Eve, Mother of
God and Mother of the Church.
In her
response to the angel’s message Mary becomes totally open to God, totally
vulnerable and totally reliant upon him alone. In her openness and her
vulnerability there is the space in which God can be at work. In Adam and Eve
we see how sin can separate us from God. In Mary we see how God begins to put
that right. From the moment of her Conception she lives the life of the
baptised: filled with sanctifying grace, united with God, because of what her
Son will do. She is the model of what humanity can be, she gives us hope as
Christians, and points us to her Son, Our Lord and Saviour, whose coming as our
Judge and as a baby in Bethlehem we prepare for in this season of Advent.
Mary trusts
in God, she says ‘yes’, and is filled with love, a gift which must be shared.
She offers the church the perfect example of how to live a Christian life, in
joyful hope and obedience: at the Marriage in Cana she says to the servants ‘Do
whatever he tells you’. She stands at the foot of the Cross and watches her
Son die to reconcile God and humanity. But in her joy and her sorrow she is truly
free, to love and serve God. She is freed to show us, as Christians, how to
live our lives loving and serving God and one another, and to show us the
wonderful work of her Son who frees all humanity, who saves them, and who loves
them.
So, today,
let us pause to ponder the love of God shown to us in Mary, let us be fed by
word and sacrament, the Body of Christ, which became incarnate in the womb of
the Virgin Mary, let us treasure him, and let us respond by loving and trusting
God, by living lives of service, of God and of one another, and proclaiming the
Good News in Jesus Christ, so that all creation may resound with the praise of
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is
most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and
forever.
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