Immaculate Conception of Mary December 9, 2024
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
Victory! We are here today to celebrate victory! Not just that, but a flawless victory, undefeated. Small, unimportant, easy to overlook and yet conquering mighty enemies. What a reason to celebrate! I’m talking, of course, about the victory of Mary over the devil. Today we celebrate her Immaculate Conception. The most common mistake people make about this day is that they think we’re celebrating when Mary conceived Jesus. No. That’s the Annunciation on March 25th, exactly 9 months before Christmas. Today, we celebrate the conception of Mary in the womb of her mother St. Anne.
More importantly, we celebrate the way in which this moment is a victory. Unlike any other human after Adam & Eve, Mary is conceived without Original Sin. On the scoreboard of life, Original Sin is the devil’s first score. In the opening play of human history, the devil took the lead and it was impossible for humanity to get it back. Impossible for humanity, but not for God.
As soon as the devil managed to score with Original Sin, God got to work, knowing exactly how to take back the lead and win the game. For centuries, for millennia, God put his gameplan into effect. Distracted by his own pride, caught up in superficial displays of power and strength, the devil did not pay enough attention to a poor family in Israel. After all, every human being ever born was starting out at a loss. With original sin already at work, no one could ever quite manage to be holy enough to even the score.
So God made a substitution the devil did not expect. He put in a little girl who didn’t have original sin. It was the original “Hail Mary” play, the clever choice to put the best player all the way down the field. The devil expected to face the best. He knew God would raise up star players, men and women of extraordinary skill and holiness. What he did not expect was for God to put in himself.
Normally, the coach doesn’t get to play the game. But with his secret weapon, God was able to do what no one expected. He became a player like us. Then he wiped out the score of Original Sin, gave us all the plays and tactics we’d ever need, and sealed the victory. All we have to do is keep playing for the right side.
And God chose to do this through Mary. God and sin are incompatible. Sin simply cannot exist in his presence. It’s why no one can go to heaven as long as they still have sin, not because God is so eager to punish sinners but because sin reacts to God like gunpowder to open flame. So, when God wanted to enter the world, he needed to do it without touching sin, lest he destroy the people he was trying to save.
This is why he invoked a special rule. This is why Mary was conceived without sin, becoming the most perfect doorway from heaven to earth. This is why today is a celebration of victory. With Mary’s sinless body, with her completely holy soul, God had a way to clothe himself in human flesh without his fiery love setting off the gunpowder of sin. Because of Mary, God became man. Because God became man, mankind is able to become like God.
So, the primary reason for today’s feast is to celebrate. It’s not about this or that self-improvement plan, it’s not about this or that to-do list. It is to rejoice in what God has done! If there is any lesson to learn from this, any resolution we should make as a result, it is that our victory does not come from us. Mary did not make herself sinless. She didn’t even exist yet! God intervened on her behalf and made her the most important human being in history and she did nothing to earn it.
Ultimately, Mary does cooperate with this divine plan, but only because God made that cooperation possible in the first place. Your victory can only happen in that same way. You cannot save yourself. You cannot stop yourself from sin. You cannot avoid death. No matter how disciplined you are, how talented, well-connected, or clever, you cannot win if you count on yourself. You can win only if, like Mary, you let it be done to you according to God’s word.
This can be hard to do. It takes humility because the way God chooses to use you in his plan, the position you play in this game of life may not be the one you think you should play. So much of what makes someone “successful” in this life is completely beyond our control: the timing and location of where we’re born, the people we’re related to, the people we meet, the ten million coincidences that make it even possible for us to do this thing in this way at this time and it actually work.
Don’t get me wrong, virtue is absolutely essential. Virtue is a word that means “good habit.” Virtue means “the capacity to do good because I’ve developed a good habit.” Mary is the most virtuous human being to ever live. But even with that, 100% of her success is due to what God did before she was even born. Even her virtue was only possible because of God’s grace. You and I do have to work hard, to show grit and perseverance and thoughtfulness. Only, don’t ever think that being smart and hard-working gives you the right to control things, the right to success, the right to play the part in the world that you want to play.
God has a place for you, a plan for you and it is better than what you would choose for yourself. The real secret to success then, the secret to victory is to accept that plan and then work hard at it, to make all of your efforts at excellence line up with the much more excellent providence of God. “May it be done to me according to your word.”
And what is his word for us? Victory over sin and death. Victory over self-reliance and pride. Victory over the anxiety of doing it all on our own. Hear his word to you. Accept that word. Celebrate and rejoice in what that word has already done. If we let it be so, the Word of God for us is: Victory.