More thoughts on the Immaculate Conception

 

Today, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.   In 1854, Pope Pius IX declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception:   The Most Holy Virgin Mary was, in the very first moment of her conception, by a unique gift of grace and privilege of Almighty God and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Redeemer of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin. (Ineffabilis Deus, Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception)   Thus, the Church teaches that the Blessed Mother was redeemed by her Son, just as we are, but by a Divine anticipation of the merits of the Word-made-flesh. Like Eve before her, she was not subject to the Fall and thus to the prince of this world. However, unlike Eve, she would never surrender that freedom which God’s grace provided her.

We encourage you to read our special page dedicated to the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, where we answer questions such as: How do we know Mary was immaculately conceived? Is the Immaculate Conception in the Bible? Why did God choose Mary? How are the Immaculate Conception, Lourdes, and St. Bernadette related? On the page, we also offer a free eBook, The Immaculate Conception Novena, to help you reflect more deeply on the Blessed Virgin Mary’s obedient heart to God’s Will and her unique role as Mother of our Savior.  We pray this page and eBook will help you grow in devotion to our Blessed Mother, who always points us to her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.    In Christ,   Your EWTN Family

Thoughts on the Immaculate Conception

 

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Luke 1:26–38

Friends, today we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Church Fathers consistently referred to Mary as the New Eve, which is to say, the one who reversed the momentum started by the mother of the human race. The Ave of the angel was seen as the reversal of Eva. While Eve grasped at divinity, Mary said, “May it be done to me.” Here’s the liberating paradox: Passivity before objective values is precisely what makes life wonderful. Allowing oneself to be invaded and rearranged by objective value is what makes life worth living. And this applies unsurpassably to our relationship with God. The message that your life is not about you does indeed crush the false self that would bend the whole world to its purposes, but it sets free the true self. The immaculate conception itself is concealed in the privacy of salvation history, but the effects of it are on clear display in this Gospel. In the presence of the supreme value, we ought to say, along with Mary, “May it be done to me!” Bishop Robert Barron

Second Sunday of Advent

Second Sunday of Advent 

Matthew 3:1–12 

Friends, today St. Matthew compels us to come to grips with the great Advent figure of John the Baptist. It’s really impossible to grasp the significance of Jesus without passing through the cleansing bath of John the Baptist. He provides a lens through which Jesus is properly interpreted. John, Matthew tells us, made his appearance as a preacher in the desert of Judea. Deserts are places of simplicity and poverty, places where distractions and attachments are eliminated—and hence where the voice of God can be heard. Wealth, pleasure, power, honor—and all of their avatars and priests—are shouting at us, luring us, tempting us. But what is God saying? We have to go to these silent and deserted places in order to hear. What is the first thing that the prophet says? “Repent!” This word cuts to the heart of every one of us, precisely because we all know that our lives are not where they are supposed to be. We have all fallen short of the glory of God; we have all fallen into patterns of self-absorption and addiction. So let us hear John’s word today: “Repent!”

Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Advent

 2^nd Sunday of Advent

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand                         

                                                                                               

The Church’s new season of Advent began last Sunday, so let us review a few basics about the season. Advent is a special season of the Church’s year to prepare for Christmas. The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, which means “a coming, approach, arrival.” Advent has a double purpose:

1. It is a season to prepare for Christmas when Christ’s first coming is remembered.

2. It is also a season to look forward to and prepare for Christ’s Second Coming at the end of time.

In today's Gospel John the Baptist tells us that the essential way in which we prepare is through repentance. How might we go about preparing through penance?

It has long seemed to me that a practical method of Advent preparation and repentance is suggested in an English Renaissance poem little known today, the “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” written by John Milton in December 1629. This poem follows a favorite theme of Renaissance Christian humanists: the birth of Christ causes the classical pagan gods to flee. Milton’s banished gods include Pan, Apollo, the Lars (gods of cities or houses) and Lemures (spirits of the dead), Peor, Baalim, Ashtaroth, Haamon, Thammuz, Moloch, Isis, Orus, Anubis, Osiris, Typhon.

           

The banishing of this litany of gods epitomizes to me the project of Advent. We must attempt to banish our false gods. How do we banish and cause false gods to flee? 

We must repent, as John the Baptist makes clear in today’s Gospel. We might ask what false gods affect us? What gods must we dispel? For each of us these are different, but we should take time to consider and reflect, as the struggle against false gods is the very heart of the first of the Ten Commandments.

Perhaps I have made a false god of a few of these common today: My own pride, opinions? Perhaps I think myself always right? Is worry so common that I dwell on it rather than on the goodness and Providence of the True God? Maybe my work is a god? What about my comfort and convenience? Perhaps sensual pleasure and recreation?

Placing my interest, hope, and desires in things that draw me into materialism and excessive consumerism? Or maybe I am prone to seek as distractions specious joviality, social festivities, frenetic activities to the exclusion of time for reflection, time for prayer?

May we be given the grace necessary for our essential Advent project.

With the help of the True God, may we banish our individual false gods to prepare for the re-birth of Christ in our hearts, meeting Him once more this Christmas, and meeting Him when He returns in glory.

Besides a season of preparing to meet Christ, Advent is also a season of waiting and hope. Advent waiting is not the common and irritating waiting that we so frequently endure; it is not a time of doing nothing. Rather, it is a time of faith filled with expectation of joy. This waiting can even be a type of service rendered to God. As John Milton concluded Sonnet 19, “On His Blindness” (c. 1652): “They also serve who only stand and wait.”   

-Fr. Don Saunders, SJ

Thoughts on divine events

 

Making Sense of our Story

From: Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith

A faith community reminds us continuously of what really is happening in the world and in our lives. The church liturgy and lectionary – commonly used prayers, rituals, scripture passages, and a calendar that follows Christ's life throughout the year – unfold for us, for example, the fullness of the Christ-event. Christ is coming, Christ is being born, Christ manifests himself to the world, Christ is suffering, Christ is dying, Christ is being raised up, Christ is ascending into heaven, Christ is sending the Spirit. These events are not simply events that took place long ago and which are remembered with a certain melancholy, but they are events that take place in the day-to-day life of the Christian community. In and through the life of Christ, remembered in community and worship, God makes his active presence known to us. That is what Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost are all about. The Church calls our attention to the divine events that underlie all of history and which allow us to make sense out of our own story.

“So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.”   - Romans 7: 4

Thoughts on the Holy Trinity

 

First Week of Advent

Luke 10:21–24

Friends, today in the Gospel, we hear Jesus in intimate conversation with his Father. The passage invites us into very deep mysteries. Jesus addresses his Father and thereby reveals his own deepest identity within the Holy Trinity. He says, “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” It is important to keep in mind that this is not simply a good and holy man addressing God but rather the very Son of God addressing his Father. We are being given a share in the inner life of God, the conversation between the first two Trinitarian persons. And what are the “things” that have been concealed from the learned and revealed to the little ones? Nothing other than the mystery of Jesus’s relationship to his Father, the love that obtains between Father and Son, the inner life of God. From the beginning, this is what God wanted to give us. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Christian faith

 

First Week of Advent

Matthew 8:5–11

Friends, today in our Gospel, Jesus praises the faith of a Roman centurion. How often the Bible compels us to meditate on the meaning of faith! We might say that the Scriptures rest upon faith and remain inspired at every turn by the spirit of faith. One of the most fundamental statements of Christian faith is this: Your life is not about you. This is not your project. Rather, you are part of God’s great design. To believe this in your bones and to act accordingly is to have faith. When we operate out of this transformed vision, amazing things can happen, for we have surrendered to a power already at work in us “who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20). This is precisely what we see in the lives of the saints: Mother Teresa moving into the worst slum in the world in an attitude of trust; Francis of Assisi just abandoning everything and living for God; Rose Hawthorne deciding to take cancer sufferers into her own home; Anthony leaving everything behind and going into the desert; Maximilian Kolbe saying, “I’m a Catholic priest; take me in his place.” This is how faith transforms the Christian life. Bishop Robert Barron