Fr. Paul Weinberger
St. William’s Catholic Parish
Greenville, Texas
12/8/05
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
With God all things are possible. Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to your Word.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Let me say that I am impressed that so many came for this special day in the life of the Church and the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am also glad to see so many because on a Holy Day extra graces are ravished upon us and then when you factor in the conditions outside, I think it is ten out of ten and I am very serious about this point. May God reward you all tremendously for your efforts.
I have to say that today is a very special day for the USA. Our country is consecrated to the Immaculate Conception. The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is that big beautiful Basilica there in Washington D.C. and it pales in comparison to the beauty of the person about which this Mass is centered, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is the first moment of the first minute in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. You recall that the Church has always called the parents of the Virgin Mary, “St.” Joachim and “St.” Anne. They are the grandparents of Jesus.
Many times I think back about my grandparents. Yesterday, in 1977 I was just a few months out of high school and working at my full time job in a grocery store. I got a call from my father telling me that my Godfather, who was also my paternal grandfather, had just passed away. What a dear man my grandfather was. Now that the time is close to being three years without my father I think of these things more often. But I still remember when my father called to tell me that his father had just passed away. What an honor it was to have that conversation with my dad, painful though it was for both of us.
My grandfather was one of seven brothers; there were other siblings, who at birth were over fifteen pounds. They didn’t survive because they couldn’t stem the colic back then. All the surviving siblings were boys and to look at the picture of my great grandmother, Pauline, I remember that monkey business was not found in her dictionary. My great uncles were full of monkey business but not around her I am sure.
Well, my great grandmother lived on a farm and they farmed with mules and horses. I remember they built a new house the year I was born, 1959, and they put in a new luxury feature; it was a well on the back porch. How many of you went out and broke the ice off the well this morning before you scooped out the water to…yea, right! [Laughter] Anyway, my great grandmother had all these mouths to feed so that the farm could go forward, so she said she would have to choose one of the sons to help her with the cooking. You know, the microwave just wasn’t dependable back then. [Laughter] So she chose my grandfather; he was an excellent cook. When I was eight or nine I saw how well my grandfather had taught my dad to cook, who was an excellent cook as well.
Before it could turn thirty-four degrees my dad would have already made the first pot of chili, stew, bbq or something that would be tempting. Although he was a great cook, those first eight or nine years of my life I don’t remember him being in the kitchen. Checking with my mom she said my dad had it this way. We are all fourteen months apart and I am the second to the last, so when we got to where we could appreciate the cooking my dad took over. Now this no way binds the men here at st. Williams. I am sure my dad was sorry for having done that. Evidently what my dad was waiting for was an audience, someone who could appreciate his excellent cooking.
Today we have the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and we always see this Feast day from our own perspective because of our egotism; it is just the way we are due to our fallen human nature. We think of everything that impacts “me, me, me.” But I want to propose a different perspective for this feast so that we can savor the feast in all of its beauty and excellence, seeing it in a different light; maybe even seeing it for the first time. I have to say that in the past thirty or forty years, Catholics have not studied their faith. Let me say that the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not something that was made up or manufactured. It isn’t something we want to mix up and put in a hole like a wall patch.
“How are we going to explain Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem 2000 years ago?” I guess we are just going to have to cook something up! I know, how about the Immaculate Conception?”
The reason I say this is because many times Catholics feel kind of guilty about the Rosary.
“Well, isn’t the Rosary a made-up prayer. Doesn’t it smell of men coming up with this prayer?”
Um, lets me see,
And coming to her the angel said, “Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you.
If you read more into St. Luke you would admit recognizing the Hail Mary because it is right there. So let me give you a boost and say that this is not the hokus pokus that some make it out to be. The next time that someone disagrees with the Immaculate Conception ask them how they would explain it and then pause while they clear their throats.
“Arghhh, arhh grrrr…look over there!”
Right? They change the subject. [Laughter] Again, if you disagree with the Immaculate Conception then how do you explain the Virgin Birth of Christ?
“Well, you just put this over here and that goes over there…”
Yea, it is as obvious as cooking, right?
You can go back to the Book of Genesis, which the First reading today was taken from. God has come to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve have hidden themselves; they are naked and are ashamed of the nakedness. They have always been naked but they just realize it now. God asked them who told them they were naked.
Lets consider God’s perspective; God would show up if you will, and walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. Now I know it is not a good time to talk about the cool of the evening but we still have eleven months of summer ahead of us so after we get a few days of winter in we will go back to the summer. Anyway, God would walk with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the evening. What a beautiful description of how close God, Adam and Eve are. This is true community and such familiarity with God. Such closeness, God taking great joy in His creation, especially the crowning point of His creation, Adam and Eve. There are people today who would put animals above human beings so don’t consider this something that is a throw away line. Adam and Eve were for God, the jewel of His creation.
Then, when God is there for His daily appointment to walk with them in the cool of the evening, all of a sudden Original Sin has marred this paradise; Original Sin has now been welcomed into Paradise by Adam and Eve, our first parents and by human generation, through biology they passed this condition to their children and on to theirs and so on. If we studied the Old Testament, in the centuries that went by, no one could figure out how to put it all back together again. There were some very wise holy men and women but no one could figure this out.
From the very beginning God told Adam and Eve He would send them a Messiah. We have to realize that God created Adam and Eve in Original Justice or in Original Innocence. Someone who spent the first year and a half to two years as Pope spoke about the Original Justice of Adam and Eve. This pope was Pope John Paul II and it is described in great detail in George Weigel’s book, “Witness to Hope”, which is a biography on John Paul II that is excellent. The pope spoke about the first days of Adam and Eve and how God created them in excellence, in innocence, and in Original Justice and how Adam and Eve are the ones who opened the door to Original Sin.
Also in “Witness to Hope” George Weigel points out how in 1978 the new pope chose his Coat of Arms, which had a “T” and then below the “T” was and “M”. Weigel mentions that Bruno Heim had some sketches that he had done up, proposing different Coats of Arms to the new pope. The pope told him no and said he would keep the one he’d chosen with the “T” and the “M”. Bruno Heim sniffed that the “T” with the “M” below it looked too much like a trademark. “T”, “M”, trade…mark! But of course the “T” is elongated and it represents the cross and there at the foot of the cross is “M” for Mary in blue.
The pope was greatly influenced by the great spiritual writer, St. Louis de Montfort, in fact the pope continually taught what St. Louis taught, “To Christ through Mary.” If Christ comes to us through Mary then we go to Christ through Mary. The pope’s motto was “All for you”, and he was speaking to the Blessed Mother. I say this because we can’t read everything and there are some things we shouldn’t read if we are not strong in our faith; there are things that we have to stay away from that will challenge our faith when we don’t have the arsenal ready to defend our faith; like the Davinci Code. How many Catholics can tell you every detail about this book but haven’t studied how wrong it is and how terrible it is to say such things about the Mother of Jesus and Jesus Himself. There will be a judgment and that guy better watch out!
Getting back to what St. Louis de Montfort wrote, I am holding up a collection that he wrote, “God Alone”, like Weigel’s “Witness to Hope”, this is one of those books that you ought to have in your library. You can’t read everything and you shouldn’t but when you do pick something up it ought to be helpful and beneficial. One of the books that he wrote is included in here, “The Love of Eternal Wisdom.” There are two paragraphs in that one, paragraph 105-106 that are absolutely appropriate for the Immaculate Conception. St. Louis was speaking of the Eternal Wisdom of God and the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is how paragraph 105 begins.
At last, when the time appointed for the redemption of mankind had come, Eternal Wisdom built Himself a house worthy to be His dwelling place. He created the Most Holy Virgin, forming her in the womb of St. Anne with even greater delight than He had derived in creating the universe.
Now you might be tempted to dismiss that as just bragging…not at all! St. Louis has a great insight here, that God took greater delight in creating the Virgin Mary then when He created the universe. When we talk about how God took great delight in this creation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception, I am not looking at it from my perspective, I am looking at it from God’s perspective. He took greater delight creating her than He took in creating everything else he had created and perhaps the answer to questioning minds about how this could be true after having created so much and so many people…He finally created someone that could appreciate His Laws and Commandments. She was someone who from the first moment of the first minute of her life in the womb of St. Anne, was without Original Sin. She had the same privilege that Adam and Eve had coming into this world.
In his Letters, St. Paul often speaks of the “New Adam”, so it wasn’t long after the Ascension of Christ that the Fathers of the Church, especially St. Irenaeus, began to speak of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the “New Eve”; Christ the New Adam and the Virgin Mary the New Eve. So St. Louis de Montfort says that God created the Most Holy Virgin, forming her in the womb of St. Anne with even greater delight than He had derived in creating the universe. We must note too that St. Anne and St. Joachim cooperated with God in bringing the Blessed Virgin Mary into this world. She had two parents, right? St. Louis goes on to say,
It is impossible on the one hand to put into words the gifts which the Blessed Trinity endowed this Most Fair Creature, the Immaculate Conception, or on the other hand describe the faithful care which she corresponded to the graces of her Creator.
How many times have you given a child or grandchild something very precious to you and they return it to you saying,
“Gee. I don’t remember it having pieces.”
Father Paul turns to the Altar boys and asks if they knew anything about that kind of thing happening. [Laughter]
The parent responds that when they gave it to the child it was in fact not in pieces.
At the end of this Gospel today, the Blessed Virgin Mary declares to the angel,
I am the handmaid of the Lord.
A better rendering of that is,
I am the SLAVE of the Lord.
The next time your Christian friends argue about the Blessed Virgin Mary, start here with the Gospel of St. Luke. Ask them again what is wrong with her and then remind them that she has just declared herself the Slave of God! What part of that do they have a problem with? We should all be willing slaves of God. Getting back to paragraph 106 and St. Louis’ writing…this is where it just kind of opens up.
The torrential outpouring of God’s infinite goodness, which had been rudely stemmed by the sins of men since the beginning of the world, was now released precipitately and in full flood into the Heart of Mary.
Think about what so many people are concerned about from week to week.
“Oh great, no one won the lottery.”
Then the amount not won carries over, right?
“Oh great, no one won the lottery. I know I am going to win it this time.”
It carries over again to the next week. What if the lottery started with Adam and Eve? We’d probably STILL have bad public schools. [Laughter]
“Oh, but the lottery will fix education and lower taxes!”
Yea right! And when you wake up you will not remember anything else I have said. [Laughter] Anyway…suppose the lottery started with Adam and Eve and every week no one claimed the ticket and it came time for the Annunciation and “she” bought a lottery ticket and her numbers matched up and she cashed it in?
Now we get some ideas of the graces God wished to lavish on His creatures, the human race. He couldn’t give them because they just couldn’t appreciate them. Also there was this roadblock that had been placed there by Original and personal sin. The Blessed Virgin Mary had no roadblock; the Immaculate Conception had no roadblock. Now listen to this.
Eternal Wisdom, (God) gave to her all the graces, which Adam and all his descendants would have received so generously from Him had they remained in their original state of justice.
Adam and Eve and all the descendents after them said “No thank you”, and the Blessed Mother said she was the slave of the Lord.
The fullness of God was poured into Mary. She is a prodigy of the Almighty, an abyss of grace.
What is an abyss? It is something that has no bottom; she is called an abyss of grace. I would like for just a minute to compare the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was called an abyss of grace, with another saint you are familiar with. If you go into the Cathedral in Dallas and you look at the center window on the back wall you will see the Sacred Heart of Jesus revealing His heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 1600s in France. St. Margaret Mary was very devoted to Our Lord and she prayed all of the time, did works of charity, and took on sacrifices willingly. There she is in a convent where they probably had no heat except the refectory and she took on herself great penances. Jesus appeared to her and revealed His Sacred Heart to her so that devotion to the Sacred Heart could be spread throughout the world. The statue up here is a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. St. Margaret Mary asked the Sacred Heart one day why he chose her for this mission and the Sacred Heart said to her,
Because you are an abyss of ignorance and unworthiness.
But other than that, right? I added that part.
Because you are an abyss of ignorance and unworthiness.
Well, that is rather insulting isn’t it? Again, if we want to know God’s perspective of someone who was born with Original Sin and then is Baptized and someone who lived a tremendously holy life like St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and our Lord says the reason he chose her was because she was an abyss of ignorance and unworthiness, compare that with the Immaculate Conception; an Abyss of Grace, then we begin to see that the church is correct in calling her the “Highest Honor of our race.” The Immaculate Conception is the highest honor of the human race. She has one desire and that is to get all of us to her Son in Heaven. Isn’t that terrible? So many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, malign our Blessed Mother. They call it Mary worship or idolatry. Others claim she never did this or that.
We trace the beauty of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception from God’s perspective to the very first moment of her conception until the last moment she draws her breath in this world. We savor each moment of her life as much as we can and we try to imitate her purity, beauty, and innocence to the degree that we can, as well as her wisdom in declaring herself the slave of the Lord.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is also called the Ark of the New Covenant. Remember that the old Ark of the Covenant was made to house the stone tablets on which the finger of God had written the Commandments. God instructed that it be made by this many cubits and that many cubits and to cover it in gold. He instructed that poles were to be made so that the Levites could carry it around. It was God’s presence among Israel. Israel got lazy and started rolling it around on a cart after God said to carry it and they lost it in battle. Anyone who reached out to support the Ark of the Covenant when it was falling off the ridiculous cart, well, the guy was zapped like a bug in your lamp during the summer. He reached out and there he went!
The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception is the Ark of the New Covenant and she was created so that she would be the mother of God. She wasn’t carrying stone tablets that God had written on in her body but she carried in her virginal womb, the very Son of God. In the Gospel today when she hears that her cousin Elizabeth is expecting a child, she goes to visit her. When St. Elizabeth got through greeting her you know she went over and hugged her. What happened to her, did she get zapped too because she touched the new Ark of the Covenant? No, look how close God comes to us after Adam and Eve gave up those walks in the cool of the evening with God; those walks which were evidently a great joy and delight to God. God delights in this creature, the Immaculate Conception, and if we see this creation from His perspective, He is saying,
Finally, someone who can appreciate Me, My plan and My
Commandments.
Maybe you have been on one of those rotten trips with family and the whole time someone is saying,
“You’re lost, YOU’RE LOST, you know you’re lost? YOU’RE LOST! Did I mention you were lost?
Then you pull up right where you were supposed to be at the time you were supposed to be there and they just say,
“Well, I guess we have to find the room now, huh?”
They were just like piranhas; they have just been eating at you the whole time and chewing on you because they think you are lost.
The Blessed Virgin Mary understood the plan of God the whole time; she submitted her entire self and held nothing back. God took delight in her just as He delighted in His Son and just as He wished to delight in us if we follow her to Christ all the way to Heaven.
With God all things are possible. Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to your Word.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen