Scripture Reflections for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“we forget that Gabriel is standing by our side and we allow the fragility of our lives to say 'well, I don't know, Lord, let me get back to you'”

“Do not wait until all the conditions are perfect, do not allow what you cannot do to get in the way of what you can do. Begin with what you can do now, come as you are and let God take care of the rest.”

“Gabriel is roaming the world searching for another Mary, another person who is willing to say 'take this, this is my body'”

“The key to our succeeding in all that we do...is the presence of the Lord with us. When the Lord is with us then we can overcome every obstacle and that is what we celebrate as Christmas.”

“jubilation, exaltation, troubled, afraid, courage, awe, amazement, confusion, curiosity, assurance, feeling cared for by God, surrenderance, acceptance. That's a lot of emotions, that's a lot going on in just 12 verses”

“God comes to you and me as well and not quite the same as Mary but, nonetheless, true that God invites you and me to bring Jesus to the world. And ask us would we do this? Would we say ‘yes?’ And waits for our fiat. Waits for our ‘let it be done.’”

“What if God is waiting for you to say 'yes, I will bear Christ to the world'?”

“the church's selection of these scriptures when they're read in the light of tradition and the ancient Christian church fathers not only makes sense but they, they shed enormous light on the mystery that we're actually celebrating today, the mystery of Mary's Immaculate Conception”

“So the reason the church picks this particular gospel is that on two occasions it emphasizes that Mary is the recipient of divine grace. She's the recipient of God's favor, she's going to become through that grace the mother of Christ, the mother of the Messiah, the mother of the Son of God”

“what it says in Hebrew is the man called his wife's name 'life' because she was the mother of all the living. Or you could, in Hebrew, the man called his wife's name Havah because she was the mother of...all the people, all the those who are alive”

“what the fathers recognized is this: if the first Adam and the first Eve are created without sin and Jesus and Mary are the new Adam and the new Eve then it makes sense, it's fitting, that Mary would be created without sin. Otherwise the first Adam and the first Eve would be greater than the new Adam and the new Eve”

“So those two scriptural texts, the Annunciation, the angel greets Mary as full of grace and then Ephesians chapter 1 which describes the church as immaculate through God's grace, applies both those text to Mary as the living embodiment of what it means to be a Christian and as a kind of living icon of the church itself”

“When the mystical once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presents itself rarely should you assume it will come back again”

“God's grace and mercy are what will enable the prophet to accomplish the extraordinarily difficult mission entrusted to them. But God will never force anyone.”

“if Mary is full of grace the implication is that there is no room for disgrace. There is no room for sin, there is no room for decay. Right from the beginning God already filled her with grace.”

“consider that the word obey derives from the Latin term for 'to listen.' Adam and Eve's disobedience and sin flowed from their failure to listen and trust in God's promise of abundant life in paradise. They listened instead to the lying serpent.”

“Do you and I listen deeply to the things in our life that we like but also to things in life that we don't like? Can we hear the voice of God even there? And that's why we celebrate Mary, she had that ability always in her life to listen deeply”

“What this feast day signifies other than she was conceived without sin is that it is possible as human beings in this life to listen and to struggle to hear the Word of God.”