The Church’s major feasts almost always have the same readings, and therefore the same reflection points.
On Ash Wednesday, we hear about mortality, our equality as ashes even with our earthly riches. On Easter Sunday, we hear about the Resurrection and celebrating with deep joy. During Advent, we hear about hopeful waiting.
The Immaculate Conception Mass will reference, in one way or another, the Annunciation. The story has been told millions of times: An angel appears to Mary, a young girl born without sin, and who is therefore the most suitable vessel for the Son of God made man.
The angel tells her that she will conceive a child, Jesus, born of the Holy Ghost. She will also be pregnant out of wedlock, which carries terrible penalties under Jewish law.
Despite the possibly painful consequences, she says “Yes,” and thus becomes the Mother of the Messiah.
I listened to the reading as I sat at the Ateneo’s Church of the Gesu, on Dec. 8. The gospel seemed new, or at least the once ignorable words became prominent.
The Angel Gabriel didn’t say, “God allowed you to be conceived without original sin, so you’re the only candidate qualified to carry His Son.”
Instead, the angel’s words were, “You have found favor with God.”
If she had been immaculately conceived, then wasn’t Mary already God’s vessel by default? Needing no effort to be pure, to be holy, to resist sin?
During the homily, our much-loved theology professor, Fr. Adolfo Dacanay, SJ, indeed alluded to the words; but instead of re-preaching the Immaculate Conception, he stressed what we might have missed had we simply read the Gospel as a story.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception means that Mary was free from original sin: the sin that came from Adam and Eve, the one that blots every soul created pure and good. However (and here, I am paraphrasing Father Dacanay), Mary was not free from temptation.
By that token, Father Dacanay asked, would it not have been possible for Mary to want to be “marites” (gossipy) with the neighbors? Impatient with Jesus when he ran off to the temple instead of going home with her and Joseph? Angry at the scribes and pharisees for what they did to Her Son?
All these, Father Dacanay said, would have been understandable, for Mary was a young mother who belonged to a tight-knit community, deeply loved her child, and would do everything for him. And yet, she chose not to sin.
“That she was kept free from original sin was God’s gift to her,” Father Dacanay pronounced, “That she kept herself free from sin was her response to God.”
It was this response that made her find favor with God, for, like all of us, she, too, was a fearful human being. She didn’t even give an immediate “yes,” not until she was reminded that her cousin Elizabeth, once thought barren, was now with child.
When Mary finally acceded, she gave a quiet, simple answer. There was no excitement, no hint of pride in her role. It was a surrender, an acknowledgment that even if she had been looked upon with favor, she was still a humble creature created of the ashes of the earth, in constant need of grace.
But when she had a choice, she took it, fully and wholeheartedly, with no pomp, only silence.
She, too, would wait, with hope, the way her people had for centuries as they searched for a Messiah. One day, she would celebrate with joy when the body of her Son could no longer be found in the tomb.
In the company of the angel of the Annunciation, she was another human being who, though fashioned with no stains of original sin, lived in a world where temptation could lure even the righteous. Yet she resisted the urge to sin, and it was this strength, this generosity of spirit, this enormity of heart, that made her great.
There is this book called “Mystical City of God,” which talks about Mary’s life as revealed to the seer Blessed Mary of Agreda. In it, the seer writes that God always held Mary’s heart in His hands, for her heart was so full of love, that it would burst and kill her instantly if her Creator was not there to protect her.
Even with her great heart, its overflowing love, her potential for fame, and her refusal to fall beneath the weight of human foibles, Mary remained the humble girl in a village in Palestine.
She lived at a time when the empire of Rome held sway, and women had no voice. She was but a young girl, and yet she gave her consent freely, against silence enforced on peoples who wished to live in freedom, to an angel who came as a stranger at a time of wars and great uncertainty.
Thousands of years later, we have countries with bluster and bombs that rain down their weapons or water cannons and draw out the screams and cries of the helpless and oppressed.
There seems to be a preoccupation with who uses greater force, who is most capable of great torment.
Christmas is the reminder that noise is weakness, a human tendency to cloak its fears in as loud a voice as possible—for it was from the soft “yes” of a young girl, near-invisible in her immaculateness, that truly great things came.
iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu