"I am the Immaculate Conception"

Blessed Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception!

A few years after the Church, over 150 years ago, declared that Mary was the Immaculate Conception, Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in France telling her: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She does not say, “I was immaculately conceived,” but, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” No other human person can say this. Jesus is fully human and divine, but He is not a human person; He is one person, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, to which He has united two natures: a human one and His divine one. Jesus, in His divinity, was not conceived for He proceeded from the Father; his humanity was immaculately conceived, but His divine personhood has always proceeded from the Father. Properly speaking, Jesus cannot say, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

The night before Saint Maximillian Kolbe was taken away by the Gestapo to his eventual death at Auschwitz where he offered his life in place of another, He received a new insight into Mary and the Holy Spirit; it was the last thing he wrote. He said Mary is the created Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and in that way could be said to be conceived. One of the titles of Mary is Spouse of the Holy Spirit; Maximillian said that as they are both Immaculate Conception, Mary is an image of the Holy Spirit in a way similar to spouses who look like one another.

The grace for Mary to be the created Immaculate Conception came through the Redemption Jesus won on the cross; Jesus saved his mother from the stain of sin when He created her, making her the Immaculate Conception. His Redemption, the center and focal point of human history, opened the treasure chest of graces, so to speak, and He used those gifts to redeem His own mother whom He created. She, then, becomes the New Eve who passes the test and acts as a true rib protecting the heart, protecting the tree of life, encouraging her Son to trust, love and obey God even to the shedding of His blood on a tree.

Jesus, being God, obeys the Ten Commandments perfectly; as such, He would obey the fourth commandment, too. He would obey and honor his parents perfectly, both His Heavenly Father as well as His human parents, Joseph and Mary. Of course, Joseph and Mary were perpetual virgins, and this virginity was the test God gave them to see if they loved and trusted Him to the point of death (for virginity was considered death). There reward for eating of the tree of life in their acceptance of virginity was to become the parents of the Son of God and of the entire human race. They were rewarded with the very thing they gave up. We know that Mary was the true mother of Jesus; I think that Joseph, too, was, in a certain way, the true father of Jesus. We call him the foster father of Jesus so people don’t think that Jesus was conceived in a carnal way, but in the spiritual realm, Joseph is more a father to Jesus than I am to my five kids because Jesus was given Joseph by God when Joseph gave up that which he desired most on this earth: a child.

Since Jesus perfectly obeyed the fourth commandment, Mary had a certain authority over her Divine Son. If she had asked or demanded Jesus to not die on the cross, that might have been a problem for His fulfilling the fourth commandment. To a degree, Mary had to allow Jesus to suffer and die an ignominious death; at any time along the way she could have approached Him and ordered Him to call on legions of angels to deliver Him and instantly annihilate all His enemies. She didn’t do that. She stayed close by His side, encouraging Him along the way to lay down His life for His beloved.

Since Mary had already suffered her own crucifixion when she accepted perpetual virginity which usually means not having children, since she had already not put her trust in the powers of the body, she was able to be the rib and encourage Jesus to give up His entire body on the tree. As the beginning of the betrayal of Adam began with a kiss in a garden after the beloved consulted with the enemy, so the beginning of Jesus’ betrayal began with a kiss in the garden by one of his beloved friends who had consulted with the enemy. The first betrayer was Eve, and the second was Judas. The New Eve, Mary, does what both should have done and trusted in God for life and given up the body of her husband. Eve clung to Adam’s body and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the New Eve ate of the tree of life, clinging to God, and allowed her spiritual husband, Jesus, to offer his body unto death on the tree. Eve ushered in death for all her children, the human race; Mary ushered in life for all her children, the human race.

On this great feast day let us call upon our Mother, the Rib, to protect our heart, to protect our tree of life, so that we may always trust and obey God and be ready to lay down our life for our beloved. Mary always leads us to imitate her Son; she always leads us ever closer to Jesus; she is always ready to help us, when we ask her, to avoid sin; she is our mother, and her primary desire for us is to be there for us to encourage us to pick up our cross and follow Jesus to our very own crucifixion. Fully entrust yourself into her loving, motherly arms in a special way this feast day, and she will make sure you reach your destination—the Promised Land of Heaven.


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