The Immaculate Conception and the Charism of Life
by Sr. Ann Immaculee, SV
This weekend we celebrate the great Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception—the day that Mary was conceived without original sin in her mother’s womb. The suffering years of Ann and Joachim had ceased, and their faithfulness to God in their infertility bore the fruit of eternal ages: Mary, the Mother of God.
Imagine: from all eternity, God the Father dreamed of Mary, the woman who would bear the Son of Man, our salvation. He dreamed of the intricacies of her soul, the sound of her heart beat, the thoughts that would pass through her mind. He dreamed of the joy of her laughter, the tone of her voice that would resound in the ears of Christ her son, and her smile that would warm even the coldest of hearts.
The Immaculate Conception is a revelation of the Father’s infinite love for humanity.
Mary was redeemed by Christ’s salvific death on the cross before He suffered death and rose. God’s saving power was poured into the entirety of her being at the moment of her conception, preserving her in advance from original sin.
Mary did nothing to deserve or earn this grace. It was simply the Father’s abundant gift of love.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, addressing our Lady, put it this way: “In your Immaculate Conception shines forth the vocation of Christ’s disciples, called to become, with His grace, saints and immaculate through love (Eph. 1:4). In you shines the dignity of every human being, who is always precious in the Creator’s eyes.”
Every person is wanted. Every person is precious before the Father.
You were thought of, dreamed of and then willed into being by the Father as a gift to the Son. “Father, they are your gift to me” (Jn 17). The intricacies of your soul, the sound of your heart beat, the joy of your laughter…each of us is a unique masterpiece of God with a beautiful plan known to Him alone. You were chosen from all eternity to be redeemed by the Cross of Christ, and like Mary, to bear Christ within you and bring Him to all entrusted to your care. Like Mary, you are called to a life without resistance to God’s grace: sanctified, transformed and made “immaculate through love.”
May we, like Mary, open our hearts every day to receive the gifts the Father has in store for us and abandon ourselves to His perfect plan of love.
In this spirit of abandonment, enjoy the song below written by one of our Sisters. Lyrics: “Prayer of Abandonment” by Charles de Foucauld.
