On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Dear Friends,

I greet you with nerves in knots.  It’s been so long since I posted anything here, you’ve all likely given up on me.

I confess I’ve been enjoying my time away from the ‘net.  I’ve even considered never coming back to Epistles from Echowood.

But today in the Catholic Church we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and it’s been on my mind to share something about this ever since last spring.  I must write!

First, let me remind you what “Immaculate Conception” is not.  It is not the fact that the Lord Jesus was born of a virgin.  Rather, it is the fact/belief/teaching/dogma (whatever you want to call it) that the Virgin Mary was preserved from sin from the moment of her conception.  Not, obviously, that this was anything she did on her own, by her own power or even that of her parents, but rather that it was a gift from God—a spectacular demonstration of his supernatural superabundance and love.  And this gift not just for Mary herself, but for us the Church as well.

The first time I heard of this, I was a Protestant.  My gut reaction was this:  Well, that’s just wrong.  The Bible doesn’t say that.  Mary was just an ordinary person like the rest of us. (And of course, Boy, those Catholics sure believe some weird stuff!)

Looking back, I have to laugh at my arrogance in thinking I could possibly know anything at all about Jesus’ mother.  I’d drifted away from church for nearly 10 years and had only been attending worship again for a few months.  I’d never done any reading or study about Mary.  Who was I to think I knew more about it than the pope in Rome, who spends some 5 hours a day in prayer?  (But I digress!)

During the years I spent studying and learning about Catholicism, I found many interesting and beautiful ways that the Church teaches about Mary and her identity as Immaculate Conception.  Thinking of her as The New Eve and as The Ark of the New Covenant were very helpful in getting me to understand and accept this dogma—one that is often difficult for converts to wrap their minds around.

Last spring, during Lent, I discovered yet another way of understanding Mary as Immaculate Conception.  This is not something I read in a book or heard on Catholic radio or TV.  These are my own thoughts, which, I believe, the Lord brought to my mind one night in order to help me better understand and embrace the role of  His mother in salvation history.  I humbly share these thoughts with you now.

* * * * *

It was that final week of Lent.  You know how we always read those awful scenes from the Bible where Jesus is put on trial, where Pilate says, “What should I do with him?” and the crowd shouts, “Crucify him!   Crucify him!”?  At my church, this Scripture is read almost like a play, with the priest reading the part of Jesus, one of the deacons reading Pilate, and the rest of us, the assembly, reading the part of the crowd.  It is always very, very difficult to get those words out:  “Crucify him!  Crucify him!”

It’s so hard to say those words aloud because….well, we like to think that if we’d been there, we would not have joined in that hue and cry.  We don’t like to think of our Lord enduring the horrors of the Cross, and especially not because of anything we’ve done.

In the same week, I watched “The Passion, by Radix,” on EWTN.  I wrote about this on my blog:  a one-man show, where the one man (who goes by the name Radix) plays all the parts.  He pours sweat.  He shouts and cries and lunges around the stage.  It’s riveting.  And when he gets to the part when Jesus is being nailed to the cross, he asks the horrible question:  Which pound of the nail was yours?

I was lying in bed one night, thinking about these things, struggling with the unavoidable fact that it was my sin—all of our sin—that sent Jesus to the cross.  Could He have saved us some other way?  Yes, but he didn’t.  He accepted death by crucifixion because of our sin, to atone for it.

Every time we sin, we are standing with the crowds, shouting “Crucify him!”  Every time we sin, we are pounding in one of those hideously big nails.  Retroactively, as it were.  God is outside of time and space; He died for us who hadn’t even been born yet as well as for those who already were and already had been.

I found myself thinking about Mary.  How would it be to watch one’s own son suffer such a death?  Even knowing He was the Savior of the World.  To see him in such incredibly agony.  Nearly unbearable, it would be.  (I have three sons.  I can’t even imagine….)

And then I realized:  If Mary had ever sinned—even once in her entire life, like, say, when she was a small child—she would be as guilty as the rest of us of sending Him to the cross.  Any sin of hers would be like her participation in the crowds’ shouting, “Crucify him!”  Her sin, like ours, would help to pound the nails.

Mary.  His own mother.

Would God ask this of anyone?  Would God ask the woman He’d chosen to be mother to His beloved son to participate in that son’s death?  She’d already given her fiat; she’d already said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.”  She’d carried Him within her womb and birthed Him and raised Him.  Would God really have asked her to not only watch Him suffer, but to add her own participation to it as well by the fact of her own sin?  After all, it was sin and sin alone that put Him up on that cross.

Where was the precedent for this?  Where in Scripture did God ever ask a parent to sacrifice his own child?

Immediately, I was reminded of Abraham and Isaac.  Remember that story?  God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.  Abraham said “yes, Lord.”  He brought Isaac up the hill and got everything prepared and had his knife poised at Isaac’s throat, ready to do this terrible thing.  (Don’t we all shudder every time we read that story?  I sure do.)

But what happened?  God spoke.  “Abraham!  Do not harm the boy!”  Abraham had proven his faithfulness.  God had other plans for that day’s sacrifice.

God stayed Abraham’s hand.

Mary’s Immaculate Conception—her being so full of grace as to be saved from sinfulness from the moment of her conception—was God’s staying of her hand.  In this way, she was prevented from ever doing anything that would cause her to inadvertently participate in her own son’s death.  In this way, she became the first Christian to walk in victory over sin.

* * * * *

Prior to the recent Presidential election, I had the opportunity to participate in praying a novena (nine days of prayer) to Our Lady of Victory, who is, of course, the Virgin Mary.

On one of these days, as I was reciting down the list of all the many ways Mary was/is victorious, I had one of those “light-bulb moments.”

We Christians often hear and talk about “walking in victory” over sin, over the devil, over our addictions, etc.  We talk about having “victory in Christ” and “living victoriously through Christ.”

It occurred to me just then that Mary’s life is exactly what is meant by that.  She is our perfect example of what it means to walk in victory through Christ!   Because of God’s supernatural superabundance in blessing her, we have heaps and heaps of hope for our own lives.  Everything she was able to accomplish because of her own absolute openness to receiving God’s will, we, too, can strive to attain (holiness!  heaven!).  She, filled with grace, cooperated with God her whole life and walked in continuous victory, even during the bleakest of times.  We, too, can accept Him and cooperate with His grace and be filled and empowered to walk with Him in victory, too.

What a beautiful hope we have in Christ!  Hope is what this season of Advent is all about.  Hope, that is waiting expectantly.  Hope, which means we already have something of the anticipated thing or person or event, even before it is made present to us.

Everything we believe about Mary is meant to sustain us in this hope.  Praise God!

~ Kimberly