+ Happy feast day to the United States of America! After all, Mary under this title, is the patroness of the United States. And so thematically this is an easy one; the dogma says that Mary, when conceived within her mother’s womb, was conceived without sin. No stain of sin touched her. It certainly pairs well with the other great Feast of the Assumption, which says at the moment of death, Mary was kept free from the stain or corruption of death in her body. And so, there was no corruption or stain of any sort at her conception and also at her death; she was preserved from death and taken directly up into heaven.
+ These two feasts directly point to Mary’s unique calling and position as the mother of Jesus, or as the other January feast simply says, the “Mother of God.”
They are poetic and mystical and liturgical and wonderful feasts that honour Mary. The word, today, also brings even more meaning.
The story of the fall in the Garden of Eve tells the loss of a gifted humanity in the first creation story. What was lost in the garden was certainly restored through Mary’s Son, Jesus the Christ. And Mary certainly was that instrumental woman referred to in this Book of Genesis.
And although the responsorial psalm isn’t technically being sung by Mary, it certainly could be.
We are drawn into that sacred mystery of Christ in the beautiful second reading that talks of our being chosen and graced and destined; indeed, we have been offered and given, “every spiritual blessing in the heavens.”
And then we peer into the sacred moment of the Visitation to Mary by an angel of God, who announces the soon-to-be-experienced conception by the power of the Holy Spirit, with the implanting of Jesus, the Son of God, into the very body of Mary — the chosen vessel who was to bring God into humanity in a human way that would heal and restore our humanity and touch us divinely at the same time.
Would that we could taste that on a daily basis and see ourselves as vessels of the Christ, bringing Christ to others through our words and actions, and imitating the words and actions of Jesus the Christ? And would that we were able to utter the same words of Mary with total conviction? —
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
