A Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Readings: Genesis 3:9-15, 20  Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12  Luke 1:26-38

Hymns possess an incredible power to propagate the Christian faith, perhaps because their melodies and words fuse in our minds and hearts. 

Here is the lesser-known third verse of the Christmas carol “Joy to the World,” which Isaac Watts penned in 1719:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

It beautifully helps to explain the mystery of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In his 1854 encyclical “Ineffabilis Deus,” Pope Pius IX declared that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.”

The dogma does not suggest that Christ was not the savior of the Blessed Virgin Mary or that she somehow earned salvation in her own right. To the contrary, it radically roots her in the salvation of Christ being brought into the world. 

The gift was God’s! Yet “by a singular grace and privilege,” salvation in Mary ran forward and ran deeper than in other disciples, “far as the curse is found.” But to understand how far the curse runs, we need a better understanding of what we mean when we speak of sin.

Our first and foremost “sin” is not some act we have committed, not even the most shamefully regretted. No, before sin ever becomes an action on our part, it is first a state of alienation from God, one into which we were born when we joined the human race. 

Unfortunately, many of us were catechized to picture “original sin” as some mark drawn up against us because of Adam’s sin. I was taught in second grade that, before baptism, my soul looked like a white garment with a huge black stain upon it. Good enough for the second grade, though it raises so many unfortunate questions, such as how this stain passes into the next generation and why God would be so vindictive as to punish all for the sin of one. 

The fundamental flaw in this approach is seeing punishment for sin as something that God arbitrarily imposes upon us. Sin, because it is a turning away from God who is our origin and destiny, is its own punishment. If you walk away from a fire into a frigid night, it makes no sense to say that the fire has punished you with cold and darkness. 

If we understand original sin to mean our collective situation as humans who have walked away from God, we free ourselves from picturing an arbitrarily punitive God. We can also clearly see, as our faith teaches, that God alone, as our origin and destiny, can undo this alienation. 

Christ as God’s own initiative, the Son of God who became flesh, undoes our alienation because, fully God and fully human, he chooses obedience and return over alienation and abandonment. Christ chooses because he is free to choose, yet as God’s initiative, there can be no sin, no failure in Christ. Why? Because freedom is power, and God is the fullness of both freedom and power. We must be careful not to define freedom as freedom to fail. That is what it became in us. That is not what it is in God, in Christ.

Christ was not born into our alienation because he is the initiative of God. And Mary was singularly preserved from that alienation because, in at least one member of the church, in at least one human being who was not God’s own initiative, God willed that grace should work its way down into the core of what it means to be a creature, to be human, even “as far as the curse is found.”

Like Mary, we find salvation through our fidelity to the Gospel, through our adherence to the Christ it proclaims. Of course, we use the word “grace” to remind us that ultimately, even our decision is itself the gift of God. God goes before us. God went before Mary as well, though in her God went “as far as the curse is found,” down into our fundamental alienation. She was not born into our self-imposed abandonment. 

In the end and in the beginning—in the conception of the virgin herself—it is all a work of grace, of God’s love restoring what was lost.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

● ● ●

Photo by Assad Tanoli on Unspash

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.