Mary
Immaculate
“You
are all-beautiful, my beloved,
and there is no blemish in you.”
(Song of Songs 4:7)
Mary
was conceived without original sin. This is the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception.
But did
not Paul say that “all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of
God” (Rom 3:23)? Yes, but this is precisely what shows how special
Mary is. She is the only human being after the fall who was the one
exception.
Mary
would bear the Son of God, and God is perfectly holy. It could not be
that an imperfect vessel would bear a perfect God. So according to
God’s eternal plan, God did not allow Mary to be conceived with any
stain of sin.
God
wants those that He intends to use to be clean and pure instruments.
Such purity was to be from the time of their conception.
Manoah’s
wife, who would give birth to Samson, was told “to be careful to
take no wine or strong drink and to eat nothing unclean.” (Jgs
13:4). This was because Samson was “to be consecrated to God from
the womb” and would “begin the deliverance of Israel from the
power of the Philistines” (Jgs 13:5).
Jeremiah,
one of the great prophets of Israel, was told by God: “Before I
formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated
you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” (Jer 1:5).
Zechariah
was told by the angel Gabriel that his wife Elizabeth would bear a
son. John the Baptist became the precursor of Christ. Zechariah was
told that John would “be great in the sight of the Lord. He will
drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will be filled with the holy
Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the
children of Israel to the Lord their God.” (Lk 1:15-16).
Being a
deliverer of Israel, a prophet to the nations, a restorer of
Israel’s children to the Lord—all these were mighty works of God,
for which He raised pure instruments.
But Mary was the greatest instrument of all according to God’s plan.
She would be the mother of the Savior, the mother of God Himself. As
such, she needed to be a perfectly pure instrument.
But
others would still insist that what the Bible says is perfectly true,
that “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23a). The only exception is Jesus,
“who did not know sin” (2 Cor 5:21). As such, then Mary was
subject to original sin as well. Let us follow this trend of thought.
All of
us indeed have sinned. We are born with original sin, the sin of our
first parents. But through the blood shed for us by Jesus on the
cross, our sin has been expiated. We “are justified freely by his
grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as an
expiation, through faith, by his blood, to prove his righteousness
because of the forgiveness of sins previously committed” (Rom
3:24-25). We have sinned, but in and through Jesus we are cleansed, if
we accept his saving death on the cross by faith.
Now God
is not governed by time and space. God transcends time and space. So
what God did was to extend to Mary his grace of expiation from sin,
won on the cross, but applied backward to the time of Mary’s
conception. Thus Mary, like everyone else, was redeemed by the blood
of Jesus, but rather than being freed from sin already incurred, she
was preserved from original sin.
Can God
do that? Of course He can! There is nothing impossible for God! (Lk
1:37).
Indeed
notice that with her Magnificat, Mary says her spirit rejoices in God
her savior (Lk 1:47). She did not say she will rejoice, but that she
already rejoices. But Jesus the Savior was still to be born, and still
had to go to the cross to win salvation for all. Thus for Mary, Jesus
had already saved her, even before he physically went to the cross.
The prophecy of Isaiah rightfully applies to her: “I rejoice
heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has
clothed me with a robe of salvation, ….. like a bride bedecked with
her jewels.” (Is 61:10).
So Mary
was conceived without sin.
We also
need to see the Immaculate Conception in view of salvation history.
When our first parents sinned, there was the first promise of a
Redeemer. The Lord God told the devil that there would be enmity
between him and the woman and between their offsprings, and that the
offspring of the woman would strike him a mortal blow (Gen 3:15). It
is a fight between the woman and the serpent. Now the woman is Mary,
and so it is a fight between Mary and the devil. If the woman had
original sin, then she would be subject to the power of the devil and
would not be able to defeat him. So she needed to be free from sin.
And so
in the fullness of time, God brought Mary into the world, and then
revealed to her His plan. The angel Gabriel addressed her with the
words “Hail, favored one!” (Lk 1:28). Another way to put the
greeting is “Hail, fully graced.” Mary was full of grace! One who
is fully graced cannot have the stain of sin.
And of
course, God intended for Mary to bear His own Son. She was to become
the mother of God. As the mother of the Holy One, she had to be
unstained.
Consider
also that there were other humans not covered by Paul’s assertion
that all had sinned. These were Adam and Eve. They were born
unstained, created in the image and likeness of God Himself (Gen
1:27). When God looked at what He had created, He “found it very
good” (Gen 1:31). God being Who He is, what He creates is perfect.
God cannot create something in His image and likeness that is stained
in some way.
So Adam
and Eve started out with no sin, because there was no sin as yet in
the world. Now Mary is the new Eve. If Eve was created sinless, then
how much more Mary who would become the mother of God?
And so
Mary was conceived without sin. It was not that she had original sin
and was freed from it, but rather that God preserved her from original
sin, from the very beginning. She was still redeemed by Jesus, but in
God’s mysterious ways, experienced this redemption from sin even
before the actual physical event of Jesus’ crucifixion and death on
the cross.
|
For
reflection
- We
are all proud of our mothers and think they are the best
moms in the world. Think about how your mom has been a
blessing to you. Thank God for her.
- Think about
your Mother Mary, who was pure and immaculate and full of
grace. How proud of her are you?
|
(Taken
from the book of Frank Padilla entitled “40 More Days with Mary”)
