Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
8 Dec 2021
Gn 3: 9-15.20
Ep 1: 3-6.11-12
Lc 1: 26-38
Yesterday evening at the beginning of Vespers, we have opened the celebration of this Solemnity by singing the hymn: Ave, maris stella! ‘Hail, Star of the Sea’. In the long nights of December, Mary rises in the heaven of our souls as a shining star for the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady is a mystery of light. This is, one could say, the very first ‘luminous mystery’. The light of Christ already shines through Mary. From the start, from her conception, she is full of grace, entirely pure, fully beautiful: Tota pulchra es Maria! She shines like a purereflection of the eternal light. This is why the Fathers of the Church have likened her to the moon; her sun is Jesus, the Sun of Justice and the Star of David.
“The true light that enlightens every man, says St John, was coming into the world” (Jn 1:9). We celebrate in Mary’s conception a first Advent of the light, a coming of the Word who “was with the Father” into the world which was created “through Him”(cf. Jn 1:2-3). Mary is filled with the original light of the creation. Like God’s feminine Wisdom, whom she represents, Mary was created first of all creatures, in the sense that she was chosen and predestined by God before all ages to be the Immaculate Mother of His incarnate Son. The freshness of the beginning has not been corrupted in her by sin. She is new, and she is newness. She is luminous; she is light, daughter of the eternal Light, and light, mother of the Light who is coming into the world at Christmas. She is light rising like a star in the darkness of the world before Christ. She is conceived in the night of the world as a star radiating light and promising salvation. The day of eternal salvation dawns with her today. She is a morning star overlooking the sea of our world always on the move: ‘Hail, Star of the sea’, Ave, maris stella!
Jesus comes from above (cf. Jn 8:23), from the Father of lights. Mary, however, comes from below, from the night of the womb of St Ann, from the night of human generations before Christ. She comes from this world (cf. ibid.), but she does not belong to this world (cf. Jn 15:19), because God’s choice (cf. Jn 15:16), His election (Eph 1:4), has taken her out of the sinful world and introduced her into the world of salvation, the world saved by the Blood of Christ. She has been preserved in advance from sin in order to receive the Light in her whole being and to give birth to the Light in the flesh. Thus, she belongs to the end, to salvation in Christ, to the restoration of the universe in Christ’s resurrection and eternal kingdom. Chosen “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4), Mary comes from the Alpha; chosen for the reconciled world to come, she belongs to the Omega.
Hence the two sources of Mary’s light, the two suns of our mystical moon: she receives from the Father the pure light of the first creation; and she receives from the Cross of Jesus the light of salvation, the shining light of the resurrection.
Hence also, her double vocation: she is light giving birth to the incarnate Light at Christmas and she is light giving birth to the Church – that is to say to each of us, “children of light” (Eph 5:8) – at the foot of the Cross. There, her Immaculate soul is perfectly united with the sacrifice of the Son who offers Himself up to the Father “through the eternal Spirit (He 9:14) for the redemption of the world.
Mary was granted by God to be conceived Immaculate in order to be the Mother of God, Jesus, God in the flesh, and the Mother of the Church, that is Jesus continued in all his brothers and sisters for whose salvation He gave up His life.
If the star shines in the night of Christmas, the Moon seems to vanish into the night when the Sun of Justice is covered by the darkness at the hour of the Passion. In the night of Holy Saturday, Mary’s faith shines as the only star in the blackest of nights, beckoning in hope to the day to come, the Easter morning of the resurrection, the beginning of the new creation of God which is her proper fatherland.
May the Immaculate Star of the sea be our guide as we, pilgrim people, synodal people, make our way to the crib of Bethlehem! In your light, O Mary Immaculate, we shall see the light (cf Ps 36:9) and adore Christ with the words of the Psalm: “The darkness is not dark to Thee”, O Son of God and Son of Mary, and “the night” of Bethlehem “is bright as the day” of Easter; “for darkness is as light with thee” and the Star of the sea shines through all our darkest nights, as a sign of hope and a herald of joy.