The Immaculate Conception is Reallllllllly Important!

Today is a big day. It’s actually a really big day. It probably doesn’t seem like much but it is. It’s about beginnings and endings. A long time ago, in a garden far far away, God made Adam and Eve. It was our beginning. From them, all humanity came. At first, everything was perfect, peaceful, and holy. Humanity was in harmony with God and nature. And it was good.

But then something happened. The first parents went along with Satan and fell away from God. They disobeyed and something else began: sin. It’s a dirty little word but that’s a good name for it because that is what it does. It makes us spiritually dirty. It stains us and it’s a stain that lasts! Sin didn’t stay with just them, it was passed down to those who came after them. Original sin became like a “spiritual gene”. Those who came after Adam and Eve, were now going to be born without grace. Every child God created, baby after baby after baby, for thousands of years, was condemned to be born with Original sin. They would be born into the kingdom of darkness. They would be born disordered spiritually. You can almost hear Satan say, “That one’s mine, and that one, and that one….they are all mine!” 

His influence was easy to see, too. Cain killed Abel, Noah got drunk, Moses kept himself from the Promised Land because of his anger, David allowed one of his soldiers to die so he could have that man’s wife, and the great king Solomon worshiped foreign gods. All big name men, all big falls. 

And Satan smiled.

Until one day, over two thousand years ago, something new began. The end began. Amidst the darkness of Satan’s kingdom, a single little light shined out. It wasn’t a light any human could see, though. It was the light of a single little baby girl in the womb of Saint Anne. To this one, Satan could NOT say “mine”. This one did NOT have Original Sin. She was not in his kingdom. She was in God’s kingdom. Just as the fall and sin began with Eve, the victory over sin would begin with the new Eve: Mary. 

Today is about that day; the day that the first human person was kept from the kingdom of darkness so that she could be the holy, clean, pure mother of the savior and Son of God: Jesus. Today is Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Today is the day when the ending of sin would begin.

Last night before the vigil Mass of the Immaculate Conception I saw a bumper sticker. It seems really appropriate for what God said to Satan when He made Mary. 

Thank you and God Bless!— Jonathan Lawrence