Homily for the Immaculate Conception (2019. Note, that year, the Solemnity fell on a Sunday.)
On the first Sunday of Advent, I cleaned my room. I must admit, it needed it—there were coffee stains on the desk; the trash can was overflowing; I found forgotten lists of things not to forget. But Advent is the beginning of a new liturgical year, the season when we prepare for Christmas, and it seemed right to start with a clean room. In the coming weeks, there will be many other things to prepare: food, gifts, decorations, travel.
This is the second Sunday of Advent, and normally the readings highlight the figure of St. John the Baptist, who speaks of another kind of preparation, another kind of cleaning—in fact, a much deeper cleaning than coffee stains. John the Baptist warns of the need for inner cleansing, moral and spiritual conversion. And this too is part of the preparation for Christmas. As a confessor, I have to do a little advertising for my profession, strangely absent from all the Black Friday advertising we received last month. But I must say that our special offer—the forgiveness of sins, eternal life—is truly the best deal in the world.
However, this year is a bit special, because this second Sunday of Advent is December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. This coincidence of dates is interesting because the Immaculate Conception is also a feast of preparation. But not the preparation we do during this season. The preparation that God has done for us.
It is good and right to use this time of Advent to prepare ourselves, with simple things such as cleaning or profound things such as confession, but this season is also a time to remember the preparation for the miracle of Christmas that began the moment after Adam’s first sin. Indeed, in his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes of a preparation before the creation of the world.
The fact of the Immaculate Conception–that is, the conception of Mary without the stain of sin, in the womb of St. Anne, the grandmother of Jesus, years before the announcement from the angel Gabriel that we read about in the Gospel of Luke–shows the divine preparation, God’s plan working–Advent happening in silence and darkness when humanity was still asleep. Mary is redeemed by Jesus, but in advance, to make our redemption possible too. Mary is our guide. Just as her Assumption in body and spirit into heaven anticipates our eternal future, so Mary’s Immaculate Conception, her being without sin, without imperfection, her holiness anticipates our adoption as children of God. Mary was granted this gift from the first moment of her existence; we receive it in the second birth of baptism.
When I was a child, I remember my mother getting up every morning to prepare breakfast for me and my brothers before we went to school. And like a good mother, Mary also prepares us for the new day, the day of eternal light.
Her maternal love is part of God’s plan, the plan prepared before the creation of the world. The plan of which Mary was a part even before she knew it; the plan that she then carried out in Nazareth and Bethlehem and on Calvary, when the Lord said to his beloved disciple and to us, “Behold your mother!” Her intercession, the special presence of the Mother of God in places like this shrine, the special joy we feel during these Marian feasts, helps us to understand how personal, how intimate God’s love is.
It is true that God has a cosmic plan, a plan that spans centuries, a plan so profound and detailed that none of us could claim to understand it, a plan that extends from the interior of an atom to the most distant galaxies. But God’s plan has a very simple purpose: your salvation. And I say your salvation, not the world’s or everyone’s, not because it would be wrong to say so, but to emphasize perhaps the most surprising aspect of this cosmic plan: that God’s love, the force at the center of everything, is absolutely intimate. God’s love is never generic or abstract; it is always personal. God loves you—you, with all your peculiarities, with all your history—it is you who are loved by God.
At the beginning of the baptismal rite, the name of the baptized person is mentioned because when, at the end of time, the Lord calls us to enter the Father’s house, he will call each of us by name, with personal tenderness, with the knowledge of someone who knew us before we were born. In fact, God loved you before you were conceived.
Adopted children of God the Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus, never forget this love. God’s love is so great that it encompasses all humanity, but it is so personal that if only you alone were lost, and God had to plan for centuries to save you, involving all the angels and saints in his plan, to the point of building a sanctuary on a hill in Bologna to meet you this morning in communion–God would have done it just the same, all to show you his love.
Readings: Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38
Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca
Bologna, Italy
2019
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 