Immaculate Conception 2010

 Today the Church is filled with joy at Mary’s Immaculate Conception. It’s not just Mary who says, Gaudens gaudebo in Domino. It’s all of us.
 We know what we’re celebrating: not, as many think, the conception of Jesus by Mary, but the conception of Mary herself. And not that conception from her parents’ side, as if there was anything out of the usual about it (which there wasn’t), but from hers. We’re celebrating simply her. We’re celebrating the gift given her from the moment she came to be. This gift can be spoken of in two ways, and the liturgy does both. Put negatively, it was the gift of redemption, by preservation, from original sin, often metaphorically described as a stain or spot, like something on a mirror or a face. Mary is free of this blemish. But original sin, says Tradition, is itself a negative. God’s intention for us has only ever been grace, relationship, but because of the mysterious first sin we are conceived without this, dis-graced, if you like. We’re like poor modern students, starting life in debt. There’s a lack in us, something missing, a deprivation, a nakedness says Genesis: a lack of grace. Mary lacked this lack. And if you negate a negative what you get is a positive. And so positively, this gift is the gift of sanctifying grace, of a share in the life of God. It’s the gift of the Holy Spirit living in the heart. The mirror is stainless to reflect the light, the face is all radiance, the nakedness is clothed. It’s the gift of holiness, of ultimate beauty. Mary, said the poet Coventry Patmore, is ‘the extreme of God’s creative energy’. She is the human being fullest of the Holy Spirit.
 And this is something to be filled with joy about.
 Not everyone has an unhappy childhood. Thomas Traherne, the 17th c. poet, certainly did not. In fact, it was much more than happy. It was transfigured. It was an experience of Eden. He himself, of course, had received redemption from original sin and the gift of sanctifying grace in baptism as an infant, and he described his childhood once like this:
       ‘...within
   I felt no stain nor spot of sin.
   
   No darkness then did overshade,
   But all within was pure and bright;
   No guilt did crush nor fear invade,
   But all my soul was full of light.

   A joyful sense and purity
    Is all I can remember,
   The very night to me was bright
   ’Twas Summer in December.’ (Innocence).
 ‘’Twas Summer in December.’ Topical! That is why the Church is rejoicing today. Summer in December, spring in winter. Gaudens gaudebo in Domino.

 We are celebrating a gift given Mary, and a gift given us as well.
 
 A gift given Mary, first. Let’s use another image. Life begins to flow in us the moment we are conceived, physical, mental, spiritual life, each aspect unfolding in turn, each bound up with the other. And this life flowed in Mary too. But at the heart of that life there flowed something else as well: the water the prophet Ezekiel saw flowing from the right side of the Temple, the water of life John of Patmos saw, ‘bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb’ (Rev 22:1), the water that along with the blood of the Passion the beloved disciple saw coming from the side of the crucified Christ. Mary’s whole life was carried by this flowing grace of the Holy Spirit. She never stepped outside it. It enlarged her continually. And when the angel came to her, he could say, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured, so graced, so full of grace...Do not be afraid, you have found favour with God’, and she could, body, soul and spirit, welcome the coming of the Source of grace. ‘Behold, the handmaid of the lord; let it be done to me according to your word.’ The stream of her faith and her love was carrying now the great galleon of the Son of God, and she was the Mother of God. The grace of her conception found its destination in the child she conceived, Gaudens gaudebo in Domino. Yet it was a beginning too and we must never think that, because of the living water within, Mary could, in another phrase, walk through life’s battlefield with a rose in her hand, unaffected by the trials of ordinary mortals. The sword went through her heart, alright. She didn’t wound herself, as we do, but this only made her more vulnerable to others’ wounds. This was the woman who precisely because of the Spirit living in her stood closest of anyone to the most terrible event of all human history, past, present or to come: one of the Trinity was crucified. ‘Vast as the sea is your sorrow.’ And her appearance, as Cardinal Newman suggests, would never be the same again. An Immaculate Conception was not a certificate of exemption. Rather, it made possible unlimited compassion. Her heart broke with her Son’s, so that his living water in her could flow out over other children too. ‘Woman, behold your son.’ It flowed on the beloved disciple. It flowed in persevering prayer over the nascent Church. And when it welled up to eternal life, taking her body and soul into heaven, it was hers to wash the wounds of all of us.
 It’s this Spirit-given holiness of Mary we celebrate today, the holiness that prepared her to be mother of God and mother of us all. It’s this irruption of the Spirit of God in a daughter of Eve, which fills the Church with joy. Gaudens gaudebo in Domino.

 And this gift is ours as well, the second reason for the Church’s joy. The gift given Mary, to a degree all her own no doubt, is a gift given us in our measure too. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ. Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless and to live through love in his presence’ (Eph 1). It is the same blessing as came on Mary. It is the same living water released in us, forgiven sinners, by faith and baptism, welling up to everlasting life. The Passion of Christ kisses us as well, and gives us, gives back to us, keeps on giving us, will give us more and more, if we keep believing, the same holiness, same beauty.
 It’s the same Spirit of God, irrupting in her, irrupting in us, we celebrate today.
 Edwin Muir also had a happy childhood, on an Orkney island, and then experienced, terribly, the bitterness of the Fall. ‘Yet still from Eden springs the root,’ he could write, ‘As clean as on the starting day.’ Today is ‘the starting day’ of the new creation. An Immaculate Conception. An ungainly phrase, a subject of dirty jokes, and naming an event unknown to anyone when it occurred.
 ‘But famished field and blackened tree
 Bear flowers in Eden never known.
 Blossoms of grief and charity
 Bloom in these darkened fields alone’ (One Foot in Eden). 
 Christ’s redemptive sanctifying grace can well up anywhere. Flowers in dark fields, ‘Summer in December,’ ‘Man’s winter, God’s spring’. In the most unpromising circumstances, ‘fresh graces...fresh enterprise...fresh hope’, to use Ronald Knox’s arresting words. Gaudens gaudebo in Domino. We really can. We can begin again. We can go on. We can try new things. It is worth living. Mary conceived without sin, full of the irrepressible Spirit of God, is the sign of that, given us in the life-giving blood of Christ.

          Fr Hugh OSB