Homily for the Immaculate Conception 2009, Blessed Sacrament Church
We are sick. All of us, every one of us is afflicted with a terrible sickness. That sickness came into
the world when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. And it has been passed down from parent to child
in every generation. It is an inherited sickness.
Modern medicine will not discover the cure for this sickness. No hospital can treat it, no
medication can heal it, because it is a spiritual sickness. We call it original sin. This sickness has
wounded our nature and left us with a tendency towards sin – a selfishness that makes turning away
from God oh-so-easy for us. Adam and Eve have passed their sickness on to every one of us. It’s a
congenital condition. And since Eve became the mother of all the living, all of us have contracted
her sickness, because we are her descendants.
But… Jesus came into the world to save us from this sickness – to save us from ourselves – to turn
us away from sin, and back towards God.
But there’s a problem here: Jesus Christ is descended from Adam and Eve just like we are. So, we
might ask, didn’t he inherit the same sickness from them – that weakness, that tendency towards
sin? Didn’t Jesus inherit original sin too?
Now if we think about it hard for a moment, we know that the answer must be no. Jesus could not
have inherited that same sickness of sin because Jesus is God, and there can be no sin in God. It is
impossible.
But, on the other hand, Jesus was truly the Son of Mary, wasn’t he? So if Mary had this congenital
sickness, then so would her son. This is where the Immaculate Conception comes in. God
protected Mary from inheriting the sickness of Adam and Eve. God performed a miracle in the
womb of Mary’s mother, at the very moment Mary was conceived – this is what we celebrate today
– the perfectly Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
Now it’s important to realize that God didn’t cure Mary of the sickness of sin. He protected her
from ever being touched by it. You might say that God provided her with preventative medical
care. We often hear in the news about the importance of preventative care right? Of course it’s
always good to be cured of sickness, but it’s better to never get sick in the first place. This is what
God did for Mary – He miraculously prevented her from contracting the spiritual sickness of Adam
and Eve. And because the mother did not have that sickness, neither would her son.
Protestants sometimes ask me, ‘Well, if Mary could be “immaculately conceived,” why not just do
the same thing for Christ instead? Why not just protect Christ from the sickness of original sin
directly - cut out the middle-man (or middle-woman in this case)?’
It’s a good question. And the answer to it goes right to the heart of the mystery we are celebrating
today: My brothers and sisters, the Immaculate Conception was an act of redemption. It was the
moment when Mary was redeemed, when she was born again, when she became a new creation in
Christ. Mary was saved at the very first moment of her existence. The Immaculate Conception was
an act of redemption.
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And so it should be obvious why Mary was Immaculately Conceived instead of Jesus. Jesus Christ
needs no redemption – he is the redeemer. Jesus took his humanity from Mary, and because of the
Immaculate Conception, the humanity he took, was healthy – free from the sickness of original sin.
Mary was conceived immaculately, so that Christ wouldn’t have to be.
And that is the beauty of what we celebrate today. God redeemed her in a different way – a more
perfect way – not by curing her of sin, but by preventing sin from ever touching her. And so Mary
is exalted above all the saints in heaven. She is the “New Eve.” In Mary, Eve got a second chance.
And this time she got it right. She didn’t fall, she didn’t rebel against God, rather she said, “Behold,
I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.” And Jesus took
flesh in her womb.
And at the end of the day, that’s really the point of it all isn’t it? Everything about Mary points us
towards Jesus. The Immaculate Conception and, for that matter, every other doctrine about Mary is
really a doctrine about Jesus. And: every prayer to Mary, is really a prayer to Jesus. She has no
power of her own. Her only purpose, is to lead us to Jesus. That’s what Mary does – nothing more,
and nothing less.
And so, in our sickness, we should flee to Mary in prayer each day in order to fall more quickly,
more easily, and more perfectly into the arms of her Son. That’s why God gave her to us. When
we say ‘Hail Mary,’ she says, ‘Hail Jesus.’
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