Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38)
Conception - A Celebration
Twice in the year, the Church celebrates a feast of conception: on March 25, nine months before Christmas, the conception of Jesus - that is what today's Gospel reading is about - and on December 8, nine months before the Nativity of Mary (September 8), the conception of Mary by her parents, Joachim and Anna. Why celebrate the day of conception? Usually it is only someone's birthday that is celebrated; some people also celebrate their name day. Who knows the day of his own conception?
Have parents happened to talk about it? Has my mother told me one day, in a moment of confidence, how it was that my life began? It is not easy to talk about these things; they are not for discussion in the market place or in the bar with the regulars. And yet that is the moment, for each person, when everything began. At the moment of conception, a new person comes into being. Secretly, we keep the question in our hearts, a question we maybe never dared to ask our parents: What was it like then? Was I welcome? Was the news of my conception the occasion for joy or for horror? Was my conception supposed to have been avoided, and was it then accepted after all, even joyfully, in the end? Would it not be important and helpful for me to know when and how my life began?
Is that not a reason to celebrate? For faith tells me that even if I was unwelcome to my parents, God affirmed me from the beginning, and his affirmation is constant, whatever ups and downs there may be in my life.
Today is a feast of conception; it is called the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. A great deal of misunderstanding is associated with this name. Mary was procreated and conceived by her parents like any human child. The sexual union to which we owe our existence is not something that is "stained", something shameful or sinful. Otherwise, God would not have created people as man and woman, to be there for one another and to pass life on.
What "immaculate" means is, rather, that Mary was "conceived without original sin". The teaching of the Church says that each person, even a newborn child or a child still in his mother's womb, has some lack or some stain attached to him: we are all born into a history of guilt and sin, in which we ourselves become further involved during our lives and to which we contribute through our mistakes. Nobody can free himself from this entanglement by himself. God has to "develop" us, set us free, and disentangle us from this disastrous web. He kept Mary free of it from the moment of her conception onward. For she was meant to be a wholly free and open person, in whom evil could find no foothold.
So when God's plan had reached that stage, Mary was open and ready to become the mother of the Redeemer. What happened to her was hard to bear: becoming pregnant without the child being that of her betrothed. Would he believe that it was, not another man's child, but one conceived by the Holy Spirit? How could that be? Fully trusting in God, Mary said Yes notwithstanding and thus conceived the child who was to set all men free from the chains of guilt.
The conception of Mary, and the conception of Jesus - two feasts. Is not each and every conception a reason for celebration? The beginning of a story without end, because God is faithful!
Reprinted from:
Behold, God's Son!
Encountering Christ in the Gospel of Mark
By Christoph Cardinal Schönborn,
Archbishop of Vienna, Austria
Ignatius Press, 2007
www.ignatius.com