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December 8, 2022Abu Dhabi.
Bishop Paolo Martinelli celebrated the Holy Mass at St. Joseph's Cathedral for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Below is the full text of the homily delivered during the occasion.
Dear brothers and sisters, today we celebrate the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It is always good to place ourselves under the protection of the Mother of God. We invoke the protection of Mary, Mother of God and our mother, and her powerful intercession for us, the Church, and all humanity.
The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary is a popular solemnity for all Christians. It prepares us for holy Christmas. At the heart of Advent, the liturgical season, this solemnity teaches our desire and freedom to open ourselves to Christ, the Son of God who comes to visit us.
Let us contemplate today the dawn of redemption; her Immaculate Conception assures us that Jesus truly accomplished the Father's plan, and Mary is the certainty of our hope.
Mary is "immaculate". That is, conceived without original sin, not because she did not need redemption. But rather because she is the first redeemed, to such an extent that, as we prayed in today’s opening prayer, in anticipation of Christ's redemptive death, she is preserved from Adam's sin.
The Word of God that has been proclaimed takes us to the heart of the mystery we celebrate. At the center of everything, we find the passage of the Annunciation; the angel Gabriel addresses the Virgin Mary calling her "kecharitomene", full of grace, whom God's favour has always surrounded.
But why does the liturgy offer us the passage of the Annunciation to remind us of Mary's Immaculate Conception? Indeed, she is immaculate to become the mother of the redeemer. But where can we see that Mary is without sin, without the restraint of sin? Precisely in the yes that the Virgin pronounces towards the Word of God: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to your word".
Mary's freedom is totally wide open and available for the Word that becomes flesh in her. Mary is a free, intelligent woman; she does not pose skeptical doubts, as we, children of our troubled and insecure times, so often risk doing today.
She listens, questions, and asks for meaning, direction and sense to decide with all of herself, without any reservations. Such open and available freedom is immaculate, without sin's restraint.
Mary's will be a ‘yes’ that will have to be continually renewed up to the cross of the Son to fully welcome the Word of God in her womb, even when this Word falls silent in the silence of the cross. That Mary is immaculate, without the restraint of sin, can be seen from her readiness to say yes to God, from Nazareth to Calvary; even under the cross, Mary continues to believe until the end.
From here, we can recognize the effect of sin on our freedom, which acts as an inhibiting brake. We know how much resistance, hesitations, and doubts we can experience in our lives in the face of God's call. Sin is a brake that holds back freedom towards the good, the beautiful, and the true.
We often think of sin as a pleasurable transgression; in reality, sin is a brake, a heavy weight to a heart that is made to fly high. Sin is death; it is a betrayal of desire.
In this sense, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception reminds us that we are not immaculate, we are marked by what tradition has called original sin, which is spoken in the first reading from Genesis we just heard.
The book of genesis illustrates well the meaning of this wound to humanity: after sin, man is asked by God, "where are you?" as if to say that God no longer finds us in that place where we were placed by his will. Adam hid himself. Sin causes us to transform ourselves from family members of God to seekers of hiding places.
Sin is a loss of innocence, simplicity, trust, and love, with which God places man into being. Grabbing the tree in the middle of the garden, deceived by the snake, a figure of the evil one, the man claims to be the architect of his destiny. Freedom to sin, instead of being open, closes in on itself.
Each man should be, for others, a mediator of trust in the God of life; instead, in sin, he becomes the transmitter of a lack and fear.
Instead of giving each other trust, we often send each other doubts, suspicions, and fears; we often pass on fears to each other instead of promoting solidarity and, closeness, mutual care.
For this, we need mercy, which heals our wounds and puts us back into full communion with God, which restores our lost innocence. In this way, mercy allows us to recognize our evil and welcome the medicine of forgiveness which allows us to make a new beginning.
Mary shows us the power of God's grace that changes our lives and what beauty we are called. We have heard it from the letter to the Ephesians: In him he chose us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love, predestining us to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ.
We are predestined to be children of God: this Word – predestined – means that each of us has always been willed by God for good; predestined, that is, chosen by God, not for our merit but because he has decided to love us. How much we need today, in this time of bewilderment, to know that we are wanted for good.
Dear People, today's celebration strongly reminds us that in the end, sin does not win; mercy wins because God's love for us wins. Grace makes us free creatures. Mary teaches us that faith and prayer change history. The Virgin teaches us not to be passive in this change of epoch, in this time of tribulation for the whole world; let's not stop at the lament (yes, it doesn't change anything), but like and with Mary, we pray and act, we cooperate in spreading the gospel.
Mary's immaculate yes supports our fragile yes so that she always knows how to start again from Jesus, the Word of God who came to inhabit our flesh, making us his holy temple.