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| Annunciation - Bl. Fra Angelico |
Homily: Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
of the Blessed Virgin Mary – Cycle B
We are all familiar with the fact that
today’s celebration occurs each year during Advent. What you may not know, however, is that the
Church's liturgical calendar did not purposely place it there. Rather, we remember and celebrate the
Immaculate Conception on December 8th because we celebrate Mary's
birthday on September 8th.
Mary's conception was calculated backwards from her birthday,
independently of Advent. Nevertheless,
even though our celebration of the Immaculate Conception wasn’t intentionally
placed in Advent, it seems that Divine Providence has made this coincidental
occurrence into a meaningful God-incidence.
Advent is the time when we remember
how dark the world was before Christ and how dark the world still is wherever
hearts have not yet turned to Christ.
Before Christ, the human race could not save itself from evil—that is,
we could not achieve the happiness and peace for which we were created—because
original sin had cut us off from our destiny.
Thus, God came to our rescue by sending us a Savior: his Divine Son,
Jesus Christ. Through Christ, therefore,
we can say, as Saint Paul wrote to the Ephesians in his letter from which we
read today, that God has "blessed us in Christ with every spiritual
blessing in the heavens." It’s true
that, without Christ's grace, none of us would have any chance at fulfillment
and true happiness; but with his grace, we do and that's the Advent
message—that Christ has come and restored us to grace and that he is coming
again to bring it to fulfillment—and that's also the message of the Immaculate
Conception.
You see, friends, Mary's greatness
doesn't come from her intelligence, good looks, or her charm. In other words, it doesn't come from her
natural qualities. Mary's greatness,
rather, comes from her being filled by God with an extraordinary share of his
grace: a grace through which he protected her from the stain and effects of
original sin, thus making her the perfect mother for Jesus. That's why the angel Gabriel greeted her with
those words that we so often repeat: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord
is with you…” instead of “Hail Mary, the nicest person I know, the Lord is with
you…” It is also because of this—that
Mary was blessed by an extraordinary grace—that we also echo Elizabeth’s words
to Mary at the Visitation: “…blessed are you among women." What mattered most for Mary was God's action
in her life, and the same thing matters most for us.
This is why we find canonized saints
in absolutely every life situation: young and old, educated and uneducated,
rich and poor, gifted and clumsy. Each
of us was created to live in communion with God; and only through friendship
with Christ can we achieve that.
Therefore, all our other activities, talents, goals, successes,
failures, awards—that is, everything else—is absolutely secondary.
I’m a big fan of Renaissance art and
some of my favorite pieces of Renaissance art are the paintings that can be
found in the church of Saint Mark in Florence, Italy. The great Renaissance painter and Dominican
friar, Blessed Fra Angelico, captured this idea that it isn’t in our gifts that
we find greatness, but in God’s grace in us in his magnificent painting of the
Annunciation, found in the friary of Saint Mark’s church.
The painting is painted on the wall of
one of the friar's cells, and it was intended to encourage meditation and
prayer. It shows part of a courtyard: a
little section of an arched colonnade (or small, pillared walkway) which opens
into a garden. In the opening you see
the archangel Gabriel, delivering his message.
On the other side, the walled side of the colonnade (to the right as you
look at it), is Mary. There she sits on
a plain wooden bench, dressed in a simple, humble outfit, her arms folded in humility
across her chest. The walls and ceiling
of the colonnade are completely bare: no decoration at all. The colors used in the painting are subdued:
even the glorious wings of the angel are quiet and still. There is absolutely no sign of the hustle and
bustle of human activity: it's just Mary and the Word of God.
The beauty of this, of course, is the
reminder that the most momentous event of all time—that is, the incarnation of
the Son of God—happens in a small, plain, tranquil setting; which then also
reminds us that what matters most in the world is God's action in our lives,
and that his action takes place in the quiet garden of our souls, not in the
noisy media frenzy that clouds our world today.
Friends, today we remember that Mary
received a superabundant outpouring of God's grace at the very moment of her
conception. Therefore, she was
"full of grace," and remains that way now. God gave her this special privilege because
he had assigned her a special mission: to be the mother of Christ and the
mother of the Church. We have not been
given that same privilege; and this because we don't have that same mission. But we have been given a mission. Each one of us is called to know, love, and follow
Christ in a completely unique way. And
so, we have also received God's grace and we continue to receive it. If Mary was "full of grace," then we
are "being filled with grace" and the more aware that we are of this
grace, the better we will be able collaborate with it. Being aware of it, however, means knowing what
it looks like.
There is one wrong idea about what
grace looks like that is very widespread, and it stunts the spiritual growth of
many Christians. This wrong idea is to
think that God's grace is always accompanied by nice emotions. At times we do feel God's presence: like when
we see the church decorated on Christmas Eve or when we see a beautiful sunset. But other times, God is working hard in us
and through us and we feel absolutely nothing (or, worse, we feel horrible!). This demonstrates that God's action in our
lives goes deeper than emotions. In
fact, Christ's greatest prayer—the prayer he made in the Garden of Gethsemane—was
accompanied by profound sadness, confusion, and fear! Therefore, in order to give God's grace the
importance that it should have in our lives, we have to learn how to live, not
by deceptive feelings, but by faith.
My brothers and sisters, as we honor
our spiritual Mother today and receive the Blessed Sacrament in this Mass,
let's ask Mary to increase our faith, so that we can be, like her, more and
more filled with God's grace; because, as our mother in the order of grace, she
wants nothing more than that we, too, would be “full of grace”: the same grace
that pours out to us from this altar, her son Jesus Christ.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – December 8th, 2017
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