+HAIL, FULL OF GRACE! THE LORD IS WITH YOU
Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 2006
These familiar words from the gospel sum up the meaning of today’s Solemnity.
They tell of God’s initiative in choosing Mary for a unique role in salvation
history. This feast brings home to us the wonder of God’s plan, the divine
leaven hidden in our humanity begun through Mary, the fact that the power of sin
is even now being overcome in our world despite all indications to the contrary.
God’s love for humanity is bringing about a new creation, a redeemed world. Just
how and when this will be fully accomplished, undoubtedly amid a great deal of
suffering, we do not know. We do know it is underway as each of us responds to
his or her call with faith.
Recently I came across a text from Andre Louf with regard to one of our early
Cistercian fathers that I find especially helpful toward opening one aspect of
Mary’s role in our lives as Christians and monks. He writes: “‘A heart pregnant
with the Word’ is the expression applied by Blessed Guerric (of Igny) to the
Virgin Mary and to the monk. He sees the monk as conceiving the Word in his
heart by prolonged contact with the word. For nine months the Word of God slowly
matured in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Down the years and the centuries, the
word has continued to grow in the heart of the world. It is ceaselessly sown by
the Church in the heart of everyone who listens and puts their hope of eternal
life in it. The monk in his turn bears the life of God even more deeply in his
heart. It matures slowly in order to become incarnate in him. He has no other
raison d’etre than this.”
Just as Mary was destined to conceive the Eternal Word in her womb so is every
Christian, every monk called to become pregnant with the Word, to let this Word
take flesh in him or her. To do this there must needs be a prevenient grace, a
disposition of the heart that is open and receptive to the divine initiative. As
we just listened to the story of Adam and Eve, we see them as all too ready to
listen to another voice, a voice that deprived them of grace, made them naked in
the garden so that they hid themselves from God. Human nature of itself is all
too easily deceived or beguiled, led away from its true destiny. It seems to me
that this is what the Christian people instinctively grasped when, despite the
opposition of a number of theologians including our St Bernard and the great
Thomas Aquinas, they affirmed Mary to be conceived without original sin from the
first moment of her life. It took many centuries and the consultation of
Catholic Bishops around the world before Pope Pius IX in 1854 defined the dogma
of the Immaculate Conception..
Much could be said about the development of this dogma but at the heart of it is
this abiding sense that without grace we cannot live in a way that is pleasing
to God. Jesus says it all so simply in John’s gospel where he tells his
disciples that without him we can do nothing. And yet we constantly forget. By
our co-operation with grace the unimaginable takes place, we become vessels of
God’s Word. We allow the mystery of the Incarnation to be extended into our time
and place amid all our human frailty and insignificance. This Solemnity calls us
to a profound and abiding faith in God’s continual initiative in each one of us.
For we have been chosen in Christ, Paul tells us “before the foundation of the
world, to be holy and without blemish before him. ” Our very existence is to be
lived “for the praise of the glory of his grace.” As we acknowledge the grace
that is at work in us, live by the faith like unto Mary’s, the Word of God takes
hold of more and more of our lives. As Eve became mother of all the living in
the sense of passing on to us our human nature, Mary has become the mother of
all those who like her open their hearts to the ever creative and abiding Word
of God.
For me this feast, while drawing attention to Mary’s unique role in the history
of salvation, is celebrated above all to help us recognize the wonderful effect
of grace at work in the Church. Mary’s bold faith in saying “behold, I am the
handmaid of the Lord” has opened a whole new world for all who dare to believe.
The elements about to be transformed on this altar are nothing less than symbols
of our own lives. May she help us to enter into this mystery that is about to
take place, confident that there will be accomplish in us too, all that has been
promised
Michael Casagram, OCSO
Abbey of Gethsemani
December 8, 2006
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