First Reading: Genesis 3:9-15, 20
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 98:1-4
Second Reading: St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12
Gospel: According to St. Luke 1:26-38
The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is one of the most important Marian feasts in the entire Church calendar, especially for those of us who live in the United States and in the time after the apparitions at Lourdes in 1858. The Patroness of the United States is the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception, and this is the very name used by Mary to identify herself to the young Bernadette Soubirous at the Grotto at Lourdes.
Despite the somewhat misleading Gospel reading for this feast’s liturgy, the miracle that we celebrate on this day is the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the womb of her mother Anne (and not that of Jesus in the womb of Mary - that is the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25th).
The opening reading, that of the fall of Adam and Eve through Original Sin, also seems a bit misplaced since today we focus on the sinlessness of Mary. Yet, the real message of that story is the infinite love of God - despite the disobedience of our first parents. This love, as seen Genesis 3:15, is known as the Proto-Evangelion or “First Good News,” where God says to the serpent:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.”
St. Irenaeus of Lyons and other early Fathers of the Church saw this as a prophecy of the defeat of sin by Jesus on the Cross where the nails driven in by sin struck at His heel while at the same time His heel crushed the head of the serpent, the source of evil.
This divine intervention in human history came through a simple young woman, Mary, who, before she said yes to God was created as the New Eve, the second woman ever to be created with a perfectly clean - an immaculate - soul. In the second reading, St. Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians implies that this was to be the destiny of us all when he writes, “He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before Him.” That was the plan, but Original Sin got in the way, and so Mary became the one to represent us, the fallen human race, as holy and immaculate, chosen before the foundation of the world.
This is certainly the “marvelous deed” about which Psalm 98 implores us to “sing a new song,” and, by association, it is also the reason for the choice of the story of the Annunciation for today’s Gospel reading.
Lacking any reference in the four Gospels, the Immaculate Conception story cannot be told on its own. Nor should it. The story of the Immaculate Conception is the Prologue to that of the Annunciation, and does not exist without the story of the Annunciation. In his telling Mary “you have found favor with God” and “nothing is impossible for God” the Angel Gabriel is pointing us to the theology of the Immaculate Conception.
That theology can be traced all the way back to the teachings of St. Justin Martyr, who died around AD 165, but it took until 1854 for that theology to be infallibly declared as a Catholic dogma by Pope Pius IX. Four years later Mary would make her own infallible declaration to St. Bernadette when she said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Twelve years prior to the apparitions at Lourdes the bishops of the United States unanimously adopted Mary, the Immaculate Conception, as our patroness and entrusted our nation to her protection.
Let us today, as both Catholics and as Americans, petition our beloved patroness to guide our thoughts, our words, and our actions, in the hope that she, the one who “found favor with God”, may intervene on our behalf and show the world that “nothing is impossible for God.”
A.M.D.G.
Listen to the LFTA podcast!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BI6sW1NdulF0JfbE9o7up
The Sunday readings are on a three-year cycle. The current series being shared is Cycle C, there are recordings that were previously already posted to Spotify that include different readings (Cycle B). Enjoy, and thank you for listening!