Today, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
That is to say, today we celebrate the fact that God fell head-over-heels in love with a human being, and that human being had what it takes to love Him back.
Throughout the Old Testament, Divine Love searched in vain for a resting place in human hearts. God’s declarations of love for man had fallen, for the most part, on deaf ears. He wanted to give Himself, totally and unconditionally, but men were turned in on themselves—incurvatus in se, to borrow a phrase from Saint Augustine—so that they were unable to interrupt their navel-gazing long enough to meet the divine gaze, let alone make space in their hearts to receive the divine gift: the joy of intimate friendship with God.
In the face of this problem, God alone was able to offer a solution: Mary, the Immaculate Conception.
In Mary, God formed a heart free of the self-centeredness that paralyzes us and prevents us from extricating ourselves from our prisons of introspection. In her, He formed a heart which bears a perfect likeness to His own divine Heart. Mary remains a creature, of course, but she is the only creature who could meet God’s total Self-donation with a gift of herself that was equivalent—at least in its totality.
Like the widow in the Gospels who, in her poverty, offers her whole livelihood, Mary gives everything.
For this reason, when God looks at Mary, He is ravished by the beauty of her heart. He is a Lover smitten with the woman who knew that nothing in the world could compare to Him, and who refused to find her joy in anything or anyone but Him.
The exhilaration that we experience when we discover that we are loved, that there is someone outside of ourselves who has recognized something good in us—this is, perhaps, a taste of what God experiences when He looks at Mary. Surely, God does not need Mary’s love, but He who desired to give Himself—and who chose to give Himself in the poverty of the stable and the humiliation of the Cross—was delighted when He encountered a heart like unto His own in humility, generosity, and love.
We who are burdened by the temporal consequences of original sin are not mere bystanders in God’s plan. Undoubtedly, the gift of the Immaculate Conception was for Mary insofar as God, the smitten Lover, was overjoyed to preserve His Mother from sin and its effects. But the Immaculate Conception was also for us. This is not only because she was the fitting channel by which God took flesh and opened for us the door of salvation, but also because in bestowing the gift of the Immaculate Conception on His own Mother, God gave us, in her, a Mother of incomparable tenderness and love whose mission is to form Christ in each soul until the end of time.
This heart of Mary, so irresistible in the eyes of God, is therefore the heart of a Mother that carries each of her children within and is constantly seeking their good.
We see this dramatically prefigured in the Old Testament personage of Esther, the beautiful Jewish woman whom the Persian king chose to be his queen. Upon learning that the king’s highest official was plotting to destroy her people, Esther approached the king in order to plead the Jews’ protection. Entering the royal court without being summoned was punishable by death, so Esther spent three days in prayer and fasting to prepare for what appeared to be an ill-fated project. When the king recognized Esther, however, he spoke kindly to her:
“What is it, Esther? I am your brother. Take courage; you shall not die, for our law applies only to the people. Come near.” (Esther Addition D 15:9-10)
Trembling, Esther exposed the official’s plot, and the king was pleased to spare the Jews out of love for his queen.
When Mary draws near the throne of God, she likewise bears her people in her heart. Like Esther, who is exempt from the penalties of the law, Mary, the Immaculate Conception, is already clothed with the merits of her Son. God is ravished not only by this heart which is full of grace and thus free to love Him totally and unconditionally, but which is also full of love for those for whom His Son offered His life. And, consequently, the love He bears for her is poured out in abundance on her children.
Weak though we may feel, let us offer our own hearts in union with Mary. This is how we will delight the Heart of God.
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