Today's feast honors the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That dogma states that Mary was born WITHOUT ORIGINAL SIN.
What does that mean? What IS original sin?
Certain of the Church Fathers spoke of the "original sin" as a refusal to go through "time." Humanity wanted to "grab now" what was in store for it, rather than go through the process of growing into it. So, our ancestors, symbolized as Adam/Eve, "broke out of time," tried to take a short cut to spiritual depth—an attempt to have spiritual depth apart from God, in a sense, or at least apart from His process for us..........in brief, then, it is a sin of "presumption," which the Fathers classified as a sin against "hope." I.e., a failure to "trust" God's promise...
And Mary, born without "original sin"—without the distance from our "spiritual source" which despair brings and nurtures and fosters, SHE is the chosen one to stand FOR hope....she is the one who teaches us to trust. She knows, with a deep down knowledge that God is trustworthy, and that His will for good things for us will triumph.
She kept that hope throughout her life...a life that wasn't an easy one. She always trusted, even when things looked bleak. And through her trust, the Christ of God was born into the world, and through her trust, the Church found its birth in the Upper Room. And now, we entrust ourselves to her prayers for us, asking her to keep us always in prayer so that our "trust" will be as strong as hers.
So, today is a feast of hope. We hope that in this world of war and hate, peace may triumph. And we won't give up that hope. We hope that in this world where lies and cheating are often the norm, that Truth will stand and overcome. And we will not give up that hope. So, today, as children of Mary and brothers and sisters of the Christ, we come to God and pray, make us, too, channels of your peace and strength and truth in a world that needs peace and strength and truth so desperately. And may God bless you all.
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