Word to the Wise
Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - Dec. 8 - The Immaculate Conception the Blessed Virgin Mary
[Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38]TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2015 THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY [Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12 Luke 1:26-38] "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God." [Luke] Within a few days, the church celebrates two major feasts in honor of Mary. The first is today's celebration of the Immaculate Conception. The second will occur four days later, Our Lady of Guadalupe. The first emphasizes Mary's freedom from original sin, in which the Church Fathers saw her as a "New Eve." (cf. the first scripture today from Genesis) The second feast emphasizes her loving care for the poor and oppressed as symbolized by her appearance to a poor "campesino," Juan Diego, and the famous "tilma" bearing her image as "La Morenita" (the little brown woman.) Although the feast of the Immaculate Conception is a holyday of obligation in the U.S.A. because the American bishops dedicated the country to her, my own pastoral experience tells me that vastly larger numbers of people will attend Mass and the early morning greeting ceremony called the "Las Mananitas" on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Despite the profound theological significance of the first feast, I think more people respond to the mercy and compassion celebrated in the second feast. In either feast, I might suggest we will find the "Advent Mary" - an almost overwhelmed young Jewish girl who found herself caught up in God's ways of salvation and becoming not just the mother of Jesus, the savior, but, as Adam would say, "the mother of the all the living." AMEN
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