Is it important to celebrate this solemnity? Obviously it is because we could have skipped it, like some of the feast days, instead of moving it from Sunday to Monday. I would like to approach this Solemnity from the perspective of what the world will soon witness next month: the inauguration of a new old president of the USA. He has already started to form his cabinet. In the process of shaping his administration, each nominated member has to go through the scrutiny of the confirmation process by the Senate. It is a bruising affair. But what is interesting lies behind the process.
In the last few decades or so, the world may have finally caught up with the Immaculate Conception. By this, I do not mean that they have finally accepted the dogma. We have to look at a cultural phenomenon known as cancel culture. What is cancel culture but a tacit or unspoken approval of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. How many nominations have been or scuttled or sunk because of a past sin? How many celebrities, for the sake of their fame, have had to apologise for a mistake of the past? A singer or an actor at 20 years old twitted a racist statement and forever he or she would be coloured by a stupidity of the past, that is, when someone finally discovered that twit. In other words, the process leading to the confirmation of a cabinet member is nothing more than the affirmation of the Immaculate Conception.
Everyone who ever harbours the ambition to be a minister or secretary should be sinless. In other words, even though the world does not believe in the dogma, the truth is the world expects the dogma to be operative in everyone’s life. One is supposedly born immaculate. How have we come here? Such a notion arose from a positive philosophy that man is “naturally” good and he is capable of becoming like god through his own efforts. We can deify ourselves without God. Divinisation is God’s gift to us. The little liturgical act of adding a drop of water into the wine later recognises that. “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”. This process of deification is God’s work on us.
Hence, in light of this great work of salvation to divinise creation, the Church proposes that only one human, apart from Jesus Christ, in all human history who is immaculately conceived while the rest of humanity is prone to sin. Two points to note. Firstly, that a person is sinful is not new knowledge. Never be surprised by the ability of man to descend to the lowest pits of hell. Secondly, true freedom is best exercised not on our own but best preserved when, like Mary, the creature answers Yes to God’s divine will. And it is this yes to God that begins for each one of us the road to redemption. A person may have a sinful past but no one is condemned to the prison of one’s history. Instead through grace, man is lifted from the darkness of sin into a future of hope. People make mistakes. They are marked by their mistakes but they are never canonised in their mistakes. Original sin is not a blight on human nature. Whether Adam ate the apple or not, humanity was always going to need the Saviour. Since humanity has been vitiated by sin, still, conversion is made possibly by grace. Even the most hardened criminal is loved by God and saved by Christ, if he desires redemption.
In summary, the Immaculate Conception is such an important dogma for us today especially because we seem to have repudiated Original Sin as exemplified by an almost wholesale embrace of cancel culture. As a result of this rejection of Original Sin, faith in the Resurrection makes no sense to a humanity caught in despair of its fallen nature. There is no afterlife because there is no possibility of redemption. Therefore, the Immaculate Conception is even more important for us because its full flowering, which is the Assumption of Mary into heaven, affords us a vision of what is possible when we die in God’s grace. Indeed Mary is the hope of tainted humanity for she is Advent of what is in store for each man, woman and child. She is our sweetness and our hope. Indeed as the poet says, she is tainted humanity’s solitary boast. If ever we want to say to God, “Hey, we are great”, it is never anyone of us, except Mary.
Mary, conceived without Original Sin. Pray for us.
Everyone who ever harbours the ambition to be a minister or secretary should be sinless. In other words, even though the world does not believe in the dogma, the truth is the world expects the dogma to be operative in everyone’s life. One is supposedly born immaculate. How have we come here? Such a notion arose from a positive philosophy that man is “naturally” good and he is capable of becoming like god through his own efforts. We can deify ourselves without God. Divinisation is God’s gift to us. The little liturgical act of adding a drop of water into the wine later recognises that. “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”. This process of deification is God’s work on us.
Hence, in light of this great work of salvation to divinise creation, the Church proposes that only one human, apart from Jesus Christ, in all human history who is immaculately conceived while the rest of humanity is prone to sin. Two points to note. Firstly, that a person is sinful is not new knowledge. Never be surprised by the ability of man to descend to the lowest pits of hell. Secondly, true freedom is best exercised not on our own but best preserved when, like Mary, the creature answers Yes to God’s divine will. And it is this yes to God that begins for each one of us the road to redemption. A person may have a sinful past but no one is condemned to the prison of one’s history. Instead through grace, man is lifted from the darkness of sin into a future of hope. People make mistakes. They are marked by their mistakes but they are never canonised in their mistakes. Original sin is not a blight on human nature. Whether Adam ate the apple or not, humanity was always going to need the Saviour. Since humanity has been vitiated by sin, still, conversion is made possibly by grace. Even the most hardened criminal is loved by God and saved by Christ, if he desires redemption.
In summary, the Immaculate Conception is such an important dogma for us today especially because we seem to have repudiated Original Sin as exemplified by an almost wholesale embrace of cancel culture. As a result of this rejection of Original Sin, faith in the Resurrection makes no sense to a humanity caught in despair of its fallen nature. There is no afterlife because there is no possibility of redemption. Therefore, the Immaculate Conception is even more important for us because its full flowering, which is the Assumption of Mary into heaven, affords us a vision of what is possible when we die in God’s grace. Indeed Mary is the hope of tainted humanity for she is Advent of what is in store for each man, woman and child. She is our sweetness and our hope. Indeed as the poet says, she is tainted humanity’s solitary boast. If ever we want to say to God, “Hey, we are great”, it is never anyone of us, except Mary.
Mary, conceived without Original Sin. Pray for us.
