Gospel: Luke 1:26-38

 

The message of today’s Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary can be summed up in these words: everything is a free gift from God, everything is grace. 

 

The Angel Gabriel calls Mary “full of grace”: in her there is no room for sin, because God chose her and preserved her from original sin. And Mary corresponds to the grace and abandons herself, saying to the Angel: “Let it be done to me according to your word”. She does not say: “I shall do it according to your word”, but: “Let it be done to me...”. 

 

We too are asked to listen to God who speaks to us, and to accept his will; according to the logic of the Gospel nothing is more productive and fruitful than listening to and accepting the Word of the Lord. The attitude of Mary of Nazareth shows us that being comes before doing, and to leave the doing to God in order to be truly as he wants us. It is He who works so many marvels. 

 

Mary is receptive, but not passive. Because, on the physical level, she receives the power of the Holy Spirit and then gives flesh and blood to the Son of God. Thus, on the spiritual level, she accepts the grace and corresponds to it with faith. St Augustine affirms that the Virgin “conceived in her heart before her womb”. 

 

This mystery of the acceptance of grace is a possibility for all. St Paul, indeed, opens his Letter to the Ephesians with these words of praise: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (1:3). 

As Mary was greeted by St Elizabeth as “blessed among women”, so too we have always been blessed, that is, loved, and thus “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless” (Eph 1:4). Mary was pre-served, while we have been saved thanks to Baptism and to the faith. 

 

Regarding the divine grace poured into our hearts, one single thing is asked in return: unreserved giving. Not one of us can buy salvation! And as we have received freely, so are we called to give freely. If our life is transformed by the Lord, for the grace of the Lord does transform us, we will not be able to keep to ourselves the light that comes from his face, but we will let it pass on to enlighten others. 

 

Let us learn from Mary, who kept her gaze, constantly fixed on the Son and her face became “the face that looked most like Christ’s” (Dante, Paradiso, XXXII, 87).