Homily
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
8 December 2010
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
Today's great Solemnity celebrates a dogma of the Church, that Mary was full of grace from the first moment of Her conception. As St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, each one of us has been predestined and chosen, before the foundation of the universe, to be in Christ, and to be holy and without blemish before Him. Today we celebrate that of all those so predestined, Mary was the first to be fully in Christ, to stand before Him holy and without blemish. It is clear from Luke's Gospel that Mary was already fully in Christ, already full of His life, before She conceived Christ in Her womb. She alone, among all women, was perfectly in Christ, and so was perfectly and singularly chosen and capable of conceiving Him and carrying Him and being a mother to One who is perfect. It is clear that the grace given to Mary so that she might become the mother of God was given to her well in advance of Her conception of Jesus. The angel says to Mary that she is 'full of grace' before she is to conceive a son. So at what moment did Mary become full of grace? Today's dogma proclaims that if Mary was ever full of grace, she was always full of grace and always will be full of grace. Today we proclaim that the gift of this holiness began from the first moment of Her conception.
Through the prayer of the Church, we have come to understand Mary's fullness of grace to be a gift that was not meant not just for a temporary assignment but for an eternal assignment from God. If Mary had no such eternal assignment, she could have been perfected by God for the minimum amount of time with the minimum amount of grace needed for the job, to give birth to the Savior. Yet the Church in her prayer has come to understand this being full of grace to mean much more. Mary was already full of grace by the time the angel Gabriel appeared to her, a clue that her mission from God was not at all temporary, and this same fullness of grace accompanied Mary throughout her life and impelled Her to appear at the cross of her Son, where she was given the responsibility of being a mother to the apostle John. It is at the cross that we see Mary's fullness of grace just as surely as we hear of it at the Annunciation, and it is a fullness meant for the motherhood of the apostolic Church, as Mary, like Eve before her, becomes the mother not just of one son, but of all the living. Just as in the order of nature, anyone who has life can trace his beginning back to Eve, the mother of all the living, so in the order of grace God willed the same pattern, that there be a mother of all who have eternal life, and all who have eternal life can trace their beginnings back to her. In the economy of salvation, Mary appears before Jesus, and the Lord Himself is dependent upon Mary to receive His own flesh. Just as the Lord Himself was dependent upon Mary, so we too are always dependent upon Her who always mediates the coming of Jesus, who always mediates the world's welcoming of Jesus and the world's giving birth to Him, who always mediates His grace as pattern and mother of the Church. Mary is the one most like Her Son. She is the one closest to Him. She is the one He loves the most in all creation. She alone is pronounced full of grace. So if Jesus always was, is and will be important, so also Mary whom He always loves and always honors was, is and will always be important, in the mind and heart of Jesus, and in ours as well. It is right then, that the mother of God and the mother of the Church who is given such an eternal role in the economy of salvation, be understood by the faithful as being full of grace not just temporarily, in a minimum, way, but in a superabundant way, in a way that proclaims Mary to be most like her Son, the same yesterday, today and forever, always full of grace from the beginning to the end.
Today is a singularly important Solemnity in the United States, a solemnity that is never abrogated or moved, for any reason. Today's Solemnity outranks all the other Holy Days of Obligation here in the United States. Mary of the Immaculate Conception is the patronness of the United States. In a special way, Mary herself is the apostle to the Americas, for none of the original twelve apostles brought the Gospel to this land. We have always had a special devotion to Mary because it is she herself, who personally inspires and protects the proclamation of the Gospel in this land with a mother's care. The new bishops of our country, who were working with great sacrifice, to establish the Church in the United States, always had special recourse to Mary, and so they had the privilege of representing the Catholic faith of Americans, and our new Church here, and our own personal devotion to Mary our mother, at the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. This was a great achievement of theology, that almost 1900 years after the coming of the Lord, the theologians of the Church were able to proclaim with great precision, in a way that was reasonable and could be defended against every attack, what had been believed through the prayers of the Church, and in the hearts of the faithful, for centuries, that it was a matter of divine faith and sure revelation that Mary was conceived without sin. It is really theology at its best, not making up new theology as we go along, but the faith of the Church always seeking new understanding. Our young bishops of the United States were there, and Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception became the patronness of our country soon afterwards. With Mary Herself as the apostle to the Americas, may we in the United States see our special responsibility and opportunity to be a mountaintop, from which the Church, under the powerful intercession of Mary, may shine the light of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Amen.
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