Introduction
It’s obvious, isn’t it?
When looking up the mountain toward the Grotto it is obvious
that something is missing. Our Lady is not there. More accurately, the 25-foot
statute of Our Lady in not atop the campanile.
As preparations to regild began this past spring, engineers
discovered that the statue’s interior structural steel supports were corroded
and unsafe and needed to be significantly refurbished.
She, I mean the statue, was taken down and work is being done
by a firm in Virginia to restore her.
As I look up at the Grotto on this day in which we celebrate
her Immaculate Conception, I think a rather disconcerting thought. What if Mary
was truly missing?
Now, I know that only her statue is missing. I know that Mary
is present in so many profound ways in our lives and especially here on her
mountain. I don’t ask this question to doubt God’s power and salvific plan. But
as a kind of spiritual “thought experiment,” what if Mary had never been
immaculately conceived? What if she was always missing from human history?
To put it positively, what does her presence, her virtue,
and her intercessor power bring to the world and the Church and to our
individual lives that we would not have if she was truly missing?
Joy
If Mary was missing, there would be no joy.
One of the titles of Our Lady in the Litany of Loreto is “Cause
of our Joy” (Causa Nostrae Laetitiae).
As our Holy Father has said, “The Church calls her ‘cause of
our joy,’. Why? Because she is the bearer of the greatest joy, which is Jesus.”
Joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who
“overshadows” Mary in today’s Gospel.
Another thing to consider is the angelic greeting in today’s
Gospel. The word in Greek can mean “hail” or “rejoice.” “Chairo” was
used frequently as a greeting and a way to say goodbye. The message being
delivered to the one who is “favored” or “full of grace” is good news of the
highest order. The only proper response is one of joy. The angel who is
delivering this good news cannot help but rejoice in his very greeting of Our
Lady.
Later in Luke’s Gospel, Mary will bring this “bundle of
joy,” Jesus, to Elizabeth and the child in her womb will leap with joy.
Wherever Mary is, there is true and incarnate Joy. Wherever Mary is, there is
Jesus.
The world desperately needs true joy. Depression rates are sharply
on the rise in the US. 29% of Americans say they are very happy. What is
missing?
As Pope St. Paul VI pointed out so many years ago,
“Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for
pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy. For joy comes from
another source. It is spiritual. Money, comfort, hygiene and material security
are often not lacking; and yet boredom, depression and sadness unhappily remain
the lot of many” (GD)
What is missing is an interior life centered on God. Without
God, there is no true joy… and Mary is the one who brought Him into the world
Without Mary, there would be no joy in the world. With Mary,
we have joy Himself.
Divine Grace
If Mary was missing, there would be no divine grace.
The angel says, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”
The angel does not call her “Mary” but “full of grace.” You
see, we all have a name before God. It expresses the deepest meaning of our
life and the reason for our creation. For Mary, it is to be the one who is full
of grace
She is full of grace because of her Immaculate Conception.
No sin has touched her soul. She is empty of sin and, as Genesis says, at
enmity with the serpent. She is full grace and, as the Gospel says, has “found
favor with God.”
Even more importantly, however, and the very reason for her
Immaculate Conception, is that she is the Mother of Divine grace. That is, Our
Lady is full of grace because she is for Jesus and becomes full of Jesus.
For us, as Lumen Gentium says, “she is our mother in the
order to grace.” Grace Himself came to us through her. She gives birth to
divine life in our souls. Her maternity is in the order to grace.
When we invoke her as “Mother of Divine Grace,” we affirm
that she maternally brings grace, brings Jesus, to our souls.
Without Mary, there would be no divine grace in the world.
With Mary, we have grace Himself.
Hope
If Mary was missing, there would be no hope
I mentioned that many lack joy in the world. Maybe it is
because they have no hope!
The words of the angel, “For nothing will be impossible for
God,” strike many today as fantasy. Many have no faith in eternal life, see no
meaning in suffering, think that God does not love them.
We have good news, however. Good News that has become
incarnate in the womb of Mary. Her “fiat” gives the hope of eternal life back
to humanity.
In our 2nd reading Paul says of himself and the Ephesians,
“we who first hoped in Christ.”
Mary is our hope because what was lost has been restored.
What was lost? Through the prompting of the devil, Adam and Eve rebelled
against the divine plan: you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen.
3:5), the father of lies insinuated to them. And our first parents accepted his
words. They didn't want to owe anything to God's love. They tried to attain, by
their own strength alone, the happiness to which they had been called.
But God didn't turn his back on mankind. From all eternity,
in his infinite Wisdom and Love, foreseeing how we would misuse our freedom, he
had decided to become one of us through the Incarnation of the Word, the second
Person of the Blessed Trinity. God does so in the womb of Mary, our hope.
Our 1st reading from Genesis says, “I will put enmity
between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.” We see here
the first announcement of the Redemption, in which we already glimpse the
figure of a Woman, Eve's descendent, who will be the Mother of the Redeemer
and, with Him and under Him, will crush the head of the serpent.
We have so many reasons to call Mary “Spes Nostra,” “Our
Hope.”
Conclusion
There is every reason to believe that the statue of Our Lady
will be back in the Grotto by spring. I look forward to the day as I’m sure you
do as well. On this Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, we should be
confident in Our Lady’s continued presence and faithfulness to her children.
There is a story about a priest who was asked by a hospital nurse
to visit a patient in Ward 3. On entering the Ward, he found a man who was
surprised to see him. He hadn’t asked for a priest, and he hadn't received the sacraments
for many years. "Nevertheless," he explained to the priest, "I
have always kept up a promise I made to my mum on her deathbed: to pray three
Hail Marys every night. I prayed that Mary would 'pray for us sinners, now and
at the hour of our death.'"
After a long conversation, the man made his confession, was
anointed, and received the Eucharist with great devotion. Leaving the Ward, the
priest met the nurse and found that he had been in Ward 4 and not in Ward 3.
The patient in Ward 3 was still waiting for him! This was soon put right, but
the priest felt thankful for the mistake.
He felt still more thankful when the following day he found
out that the man in Ward 4 had died suddenly that night. The man had kept his
promise to his mother... and Our Lady, his spiritual mother, was faithful to
him… “now and at the hour of our death.”
My thought experiment is an experiment that fails. We do not
have to wonder or worry about what life and history would be like without Mary.
She said “fiat” to the angel. She became the mother of the Incarnate Word and
our mother as well. She is Cause of our Joy, Mother of Divine Grace, and Our
Hope, no matter what happens to a statue. Our Lady is always with us and will
always be faithful to us… “now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
