Mass with the School present, Immaculate Conception 2024

Thirty years ago, I was director of religious education in my parish in suburban Washington, D.C., there was a little girl in one class who was not Catholic. I called her out of class to speak with her to determine how well she was going to fit in. So I asked her what she knew about Catholics. She replied, “I know they worship Mary.” I could see how she might have gotten that idea. After all, the name of the parish was Our Lady of Sorrows. But of course she was wrong. We do not worship Mary, but honor her as the greatest of the saints and as a model for us to follow. Today is the feast day of the patron saint of the United States. Mary, under her many different titles, is the patron saint of more nations than anyone else. We celebrate today Mary’s being conceived without sin, without inheriting original sin. By God’s grace, and by his knowing that she would say “yes” to the vocation the Angel Gabriel presented to her, she came into being perfectly sinless, free from Original Sin, and in her life committed no sin. In this way she could be the perfect mother to the perfect Son, Jesus.

Brother Joseph Byron and Abbot Matthew Stark celebrate

early Mass for Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Today we look up to the ideal of Mary as the perfect follower of Jesus. In fact, she is the almost perfect human being, the kind of human being that God wants us to be. Imagine being about the age of our Form III girls, sitting in your room minding your own business, and suddenly an angel shows up in your room. No knock on the door, no “May I come in, please.” That is pretty disconcerting in itself. And then this angel drops the news on you that you are going to have a baby! But although you are engaged to an older man, you have not had intercourse with him or anyone else. And certainly your fiancé is going to be a little upset when he finds out that you are going to have a baby. All of this is even much more disconcerting. Not to worry, says the angel. You have conceived this child by the power of God’s spirit and not by any human being. And in addition to being miraculously conceived, this child is going to be a great king. You, however, have not had the benefit of any courses in theology and you are a young lady in a not very prosperous family, in a not very prosperous village, such that people wonder can anything good ever come from this place. Now what does Mary do? Does she cry to her mother and father for help, thinking she ate too much goat cheese for dinner and is having a nightmare or hallucination? No. She trusts in her senses and in the impulses of her soul. She replies to the angel’s message, which was pretty complicated for a 14 year old girl to hear: “Look, I am the Lord’s servant. Let it happen to me just like you said.” Mary offered her total self to God.

Her life changed in that moment, and any personal dreams for her life and personal agendas she had were put aside. And although she was the Blessed Mother, it’s clear from the story of Jesus staying behind in the temple that He wasn’t always an easy child to deal with. It’s not easy being a mother. Children do give their mothers a little grief. But the very first suffering for Mary, however, was her reputation. Although an angel later appeared to Joseph to tell him that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, no angel appeared to her neighbors, her relatives, or her rabbi in the synagogue at Nazareth. They could all see that Mary was going to be an unwed mother, they knew she was not yet married. And just because Joseph appeared to make an honest woman out of her by marrying her anyway, that would not have removed her social shame. If you read the Bible, you can see Mary sits in good company with other mothers in scripture who had their problems: Sarah, the mother of Isaac; Hagar, the mother of Ishmael; Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau; Hannah, the mother of Samuel. And especially Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. What all this says is that despite all our faults, sins and problems, God sees the good possibilities in all of us. God works with us to make real all the potential of good things in us. He helps us live out the vocation He wills for us. We just have to cooperate with God’s plan, like Mary did.

That applies to us as a country too. New and good as this country is, it has suffered in the past, from wars, recession and depression. It suffers now from uncertainty, worry and division. And it will suffer more in the future. The United States has many problems and has made many mistakes. Our reputation suffers too, our motives are often suspect. But if we trust in God, we will be virtuous and successful in the end. God does not judge as humans do. God judges each person by his or her heart, each nation by its ideals and deepest aspirations, and He works miracles with what each person offers, with what each nation offers, little or much, to God. It doesn’t matter what mistakes we made in the past, present or will make in the future; we don’t have to be perfect. And it doesn’t matter what other people think. What matters is that we seek to know God and do His will in the unique circumstances of our individual lives, just like Mary told the servants at the wedding at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you to do.” In this Mary is our perfect example. So we should make her prayer ours too: May it be done to us and for us according to God’s word, as we do God’s, what God wants of us. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

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