HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

THEME: The “Immaculate” par excellence

BY: Fr. Jude Chijioke

Genesis 3: 9-15.20; Ephesians 1: 3-6.11-12; Luke 1: 26-38

To grasp the profound soul of this Marian solemnity, we will start today from the second liturgical reading, that great hymn that Paul prefers in his writing to the Ephesians, a letter that perhaps the Apostle had conceived as a “circular” for the communities of Asia Minor. With his accurate vocabulary, Paul describes “the plan of the One who works everything effectively in conformity with his will”. This great architecture of history and humanity that God has designed before the eyes of the believer takes place along a well-articulated plot: man is “chosen to be holy and immaculate in Love, he is predestined to be an adopted son. He was made an “heir” to become “the praise of the glory of God”.

This is a project that God wants to carry out in history, and which Jesus in the Gospels calls “the kingdom of God”. A project of harmonies whose implementation God involved Adam, that is. the man of all times and all lands, harmony between man and the world, harmony between man and woman embodied by the love relationship of marriage, harmony between man and God who “with the breath of the evening breeze” enters the “garden” of the Earth to dialogue with his highest and dearest creature.

But this picture of light is opposed, almost in c. 3 of Genesis which is partially assumed in today’s first reading. Man wants to ignore the map that God has drawn for him, he wants to carry out an alternative project: the one that will be defined with a simple dramatic term, original sin.With original sin the picture becomes gloomy, the previous harmonies are broken; Man is abandoned to the destiny he has chosen, that destiny of alienating himself from God, he considers woman an object of his pleasure, he is removed from the “garden” of dialogue with his God who feels distant and hostile.

It is against this background that the celebration of Mary Immaculate is placed. The words of the Annunciation that we read today in the Gospel of Luke are decisive: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word”. Eve, “mother of the living”, who with the Adam of every time had chosen another “plan”, is now replaced by a new woman who decides to give herself totally to the “good pleasure” of God.

The self-definition of Mary, “servant”, is not so much an expression of humility in the biblical language, it is rather the joy and solemn decision to adhere radically, without reserve and reticence, to the will of God. Mary is the “Immaculate” par excellence, that is, she is the one who, from the very beginnings of her earthly existence and forever, has always fully adhered to the great plan of God. She designs before believers in Christ the itinerary of faith and of love in its purest, and most sublime and complete form.

MAY “MARY” THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION INTERCEDE FOR US!!!

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