Fiat, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, December 8, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Francis Xavier Parish
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady
December 8, 2010
Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38

The following text guided today’s homily: 

FIAT

• On this great feast day, we celebrate several things:
  • The beginning of the life of our spiritual mother and her spiritual greatness.
  • The beginning of our redemption, when God, through the merits of her Son from 47 years later on the Cross, preserved her preveniently from all stain of original sin from the first moment of her life;
  • But what I’d like to focus on today in her feast day is what it teaches us about the triumph of grace over sin and evil and how we’re called to share in, and share with others, that triumph.
• Genesis
  • We see in the first reading the seeming triumph of sin and evil.
  • Satan gets our first parents to distrust in God, saying that the only reason why they couldn’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was because God was jealous of his power. Once they distrusted God and disobeyed the one restriction he had given, everything changed and there was a three-fold rupture:
    • Rupture with God, shown in the fact that they were trying to hide from him in the Garden;
    • Rupture with each other, shown in how they covered their most vulnerable parts lest the other hurt them and how neither could accept responsibility, how Adam tried to blame Eve and Eve the serpent;
    • Rupture within themselves, shown in how their body and soul would no longer easily line up with what God was asking.
  • But we also see here the beginning of the redemption, what tradition calls the “proto-evangelium” or “first Gospel.” God promises that he will put enmity between the serpent and the woman and between her offspring and the devil’s. Enmity is scorn and hatred. It’s obvious that God didn’t have to do anything for the serpent to have enmity toward us: he already hated us and wanted to bring us down, just as he was showing with our first parents. But he put a real enmity in the new Eve, Mary, for the serpent, and between Jesus and the serpent. An enmity that would recognize Satan’s evil works and empty promises, an enmity that would say no to the supposed lure of sin.
• Gospel
  • This all comes to fruition in the Gospel, when we see Mary, having been filled with grace, say as consequential a “yes,” as Eve’s “no.” By her “fiat,” her “let it be done to me according to your word,” Mary showed that it was possible for grace to triumph over sin, for God to triumph over Satan and evil in the human heart.
  • This enmity for the serpent out of total love for God was not a one-time thing for Mary. She would continue to reject Satan, all his empty promises, and all his evil works, all the way up until the time when it seemed that he was triumphing over her offspring on the Cross. But she said “Amen” here as well and became a co-redeemer.
• Second reading
  • This is God’s plan for us, that we have a true enmity for evil so that we, like Mary, through the gift of the redemption we receive not at our conception but at our baptism and thereafter in the sacraments, might be full of grace, full of God, full of joy, full of life.
  • In today’s second reading, St. Paul reminds us that God the Father “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,” choosing us in Christ before the beginning of time “to be holy and immaculate in his sight” and “live for the praise of his glory.”
  • Just as much as Mary was chosen by God, so we have been chosen. Just as much as by her “yes” the history of the world was changed for the better, so by our “yes” God can change the world, saving us and others for eternity.
• Our cooperation
  • Like Mary, however, this won’t happen without our constant consent. We need to say “yes” to the plan and continue to say “yes.” We need to spurn the devil and all his allures. We really have to reject him, just as was said at our baptism and renewed at least every Easter.
• Pope Benedict
  • Pope Benedict said about Mary’s Immaculate Conception, quoting St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, that “where sin has increased, grace has all the more.”
  • Her triumph tells us “do not be afraid. Jesus has defeated evil. He has uprooted it, delivering us from its rule.”
  • He adds, “How great is our need of this good news! Every day, in fact, in the newspapers, on television and on the radio bad news is broadcast, repeated, amplified, so that we become used to the most terrible things and inured to them, and in a certain way poisoned, since the negative effect is never completely eliminated but accumulates day after day. The heart hardens and thoughts grow gloomy. For this reason, the city needs Mary whose presence speaks of God, reminds us of the victory of Grace over sin and leads us to hope, even in the most difficult human situations.”
• God
  • God is stronger than evil and will make us stronger than evil provided that we remain full of grace, full of God, which requires our constantly renewing our faith, hope and love in him as Mary teaches us.
  • As Mary says, “Nothing will be impossible for God!”
• Let us ask Mary, as we prepare to receive within us the same Son for whom she was immaculately conceived in order to bear for nine months, to intercede for us that we may have the proper enmity against the devil, that we may say and continue to repeat all our days a wholehearted “yes” to God, so that we may be “holy and immaculate in his sight” and “live for the praise of his glory” today, in this life and forever with Mary in the next.

“O Mary conceived without original sin. Pray for us who have recourse to thee!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: