Just recently, from YouTube through Facebook, a friend of mine shared a mother’s story (see link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyxRjmQx-Os&feature=related). When Japan was shocked by a powerful earthquake, many houses collapsed. After few days, rescuers reached the devastated area and they started digging for the remains of the victims. Suddenly, they were astounded when they lifted a slab of wood that pressed onto a dead woman’s back who was in a posture of kneeling with her arms on the ground as if she’s stopping the slab to further drop even for some few more inches. The rescuers stretched her cold dead body. They were right, there was something beneath her, something wrapped in a blanket. They open the blanket slowly… ‘God’s grace!,’ they exclaim, they can’t believe… there’s a child wrapped in it. The child was almost dead… not moving nor responding. They immediately brought the child to a safer ground for first aid medication, but when they fully unwrapped the blanket they discovered a celfon. They charged it, turned it on and the picture of the woman who appears to be the mother of the child was on the screen with the child. When they pressed to play the last recorded message of the mother, they heard her saying these words in agony of pain: “please tell my baby, that I love Him…” The baby opened his little eyes when he recognized the voice of his mother; he started to cry even in a very weak voice.
In our story, the mother gave her life to her baby. The mother, upon the occurrence of that terrible earthquake, even without thinking, automatically run to cover her baby. Her instant reaction was to protect her child. It was a mother instinct. This motherly instinct happens because of love; and this would reach even to the point of death. In the story, we witnessed that motherhood is all about self-giving… all about loving.
Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is one of the Dogmas of the Church. A Dogma of the Church is a teaching of the church which we believe as an entire church. From the opening prayer, we heard that God, the Father, prepared the Virgin Mary to be the worthy mother of His only son. In fact, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception literally refers to the conception of Mary, which after nine months will be born on her birthday on September 8. But, as Filipino we often associate this feast to the virginal conception of Jesus: this is because we understand that without Mary, there would also be no Jesus Christ.
To give you a more adept insight about the significance of our feast today, allow me to share three important points about the Immaculate Conception of Mary: first, Mary was conceived free from sin and preserved by God to be the mother of the Messiah; second, with Mary’s response, she is called ‘blessed among women” by every generations; third, Mary is our hope as Christians.
First, Mary was conceived free from sin and preserved by God to be the mother of the Messiah. When the Angel announced to her that she will bore the Son of God, she accepted by saying “yes, thy will be done,” she responded with gladness in faith to God’s gift. For Mary, she knew that it would be a risky situation for it will be a matter of life and death in their culture if a woman began to conceive without a known husband. It would be a shame to her family and ridicule to their biased society. That because of this, she would be sentenced to die by stoning. But, she didn’t mind all these probable sources of fears because of her obedience to God. With Mary’s fiat to God, the destiny of human race has been changed forever. By being the blameless Mother of the only Son of God, we were saved from the bondage of sin.
Second, Mary is called ‘Blessed among women’ by every generations. We, as Catholics, are very thankful to Mary’s gift to us. Without her great ‘fiat,’ a Messiah wouldn’t have been born. Our history proves that Mary is honored in different ages. In the Eastern Church, as early as the 7th century, there’s already a feast of the called the Conception of Mary. The celebration reached the West, especially England towards the 10th century. From then on, the feast passed into Europe, and become a feast of the Immaculate Conception. The feast was made a holy day of obligation by Clement XI in 1708. The invocation “O, Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse thee” confirming Mary’s freedom from all stains of sins was affirmed by accounts of The Miraculous Medal apparitions to St. Catherine Laboure in 1830. Finally, in 1854, the Immaculate Conception was defined by Pope Pius IX in the bull Ineffabilis Deus, the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception which stressed that “Mary was never bound by any guilt of original sin.” And from then on, through this feast, we commemorate as one Christian family the Blessedness of our Lady, being conceived without sin.
Third, Mary is our hope as Christians. The most important thing that we should remember about the Immaculate Conception is the assurance that she was redeemed despite the original sin which is rooted from Adam and Eve that separated humanity from God. Mary was conceived sinless, that is she was redeemed by the grace of her Son, Jesus who died for all of us sinners on the Calvary. We can see that redemption is fully at work in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. We can say that through this gift, Mary is the fully healed one: she never had the spiritual flaws that hold us back from total love of God. What she has in her pondering heart were songs of thanksgiving to God’s greatness and glory. Thus the Immaculate Conception allowed Mary’s ‘yes’ at the Annunciation to be limitless, without any unconscious restriction.
Mary, was preserved by God from the stain of original sin. As our source of hope, God let her to share in His plan of saving the fallen humanity from sinfulness through His Son Jesus Christ. Her life here on earth was really exemplary, really worth emulating for all of us. As a child, she’d been a very obedient child to her parents, St. Anne and St. Joaquim. As a woman, she’d been very obedient to God. Her meekness and purity of heart has made her delightful in the sight of God. As the mother of God, she offered her womb to be the first tabernacle of God. She was the first to worship the Son of God. She was the first witness to the Son of Man. Even at the foot of the cross, as a mother, she remained and suffered with Jesus. All through her life, from her conception and her assumption to heaven, we have witnessed that she remained sinless in a world that challenges everybody’s virtue. Until now, in her apparitions, she as our mediator to Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ to the Father, as the mother of the church, she continuously prays for all us, from our conversion from all our sins.
Let us always remember the importance of the feast of today, the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Let us always keep in our heart that: Mary was conceived free from sin and preserved by God to be the mother of the Messiah; that with Mary’s response, she is called ‘blessed among women by every generations’ and we share her blessedness through her Son Jesus Christ; and that Mary is our hope as Christians. Let us always emulate Mary’s meekness, gentleness, and obedience to God… which are all deeply rooted in her authentic ‘love for God.’
In today’s celebration of the Eucharist, let us pray to God that like Mary, we would also serve God and say our ‘yes’ to His call.
Amen.
Br. Dennis DC. Marquez, sSSS
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