what does God love most about me?

Homily

Tuesday 2 Advent BI

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

8 December 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

What does God love most about me?

It's a hard question to answer.  Usually I don't allow God to delight in me this way.  I know best what is unlovable in me.

Today I have to answer the question, though.  The Immaculate Conception begs my answer.  If God so delights in Mary, could He also find favor with me?

The answer is a resounding yes!  God cherishes you like nobody else.  He sees Mary before anyone else can know, cherish or protect Her.  He gave her a singular fullness of grace, the prevenient grace of Christ Her eventual Son!

There's no gift in history like it.  Listen to the greeting of the Archangel, defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in advance of the Annunciation!  Mary a little girl is hailed as greater than an archangel, the only creature ever deemed full of grace and God's favorite place to dwell!  All of this in preparation for Her fiat.  In today's Gospel fiat Mary declares even before she conceives Jesus that She is completely His, for she speaks just like Her Son.  Not my will, Lord, but yours be done.

What's the point, here?  The point is that God loves me where no one else can.  What does God love most about me?  It's something small, mysterious, surprising.  It's something I may not yet even be aware of.  It's something only He can see in secret, a love for me He has not assigned to anyone else.  That's the message of the Immaculate Conception.  God loves best and most at our most vulnerable point available only to Him. He is jealous lover in this way.  For Mary, yes, but also for me.

For us sinners of course, our most vulnerable and unlovable points coincide.  It is the point laid bare in the story of Eden, a point marked by first by doubt, then by fear and shame.  I have to let God love my there, to experience the freedom of faith, courage and transparency always enjoyed by Mary.

She instead is the guarantee, that if I dare to let God love me at my smallest point, my story will go like hers.  She also is pure gift, having received the Immaculate Conception not to distinguish Her freedom from mine, but so that she could receive the terrible responsibility of being my mother, until I am totally hers.  What does it mean to be devoted to Mary?  It means never letting doubt, fear or shame have the last say, but instead to trust that God cherishes me like He delights in her, beginning at my smallest point.

What does God most love about me?