Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/8/22 Immaculate Conception: Receptivity

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Homily from the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God always gives what we need to accomplish His will. Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin at the moment of her conception by the merits of her Son's future life, death, and resurrection. Mass Readings from December 8, 2022: Genesis 3:9-15, 20 Psalms 98:1-4Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12 Luke 1:26-38

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 38 the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary and coming to her he said hail full of grace the Lord is with you but she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be and the angel said to her do not be afraid Mary for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give him the throne of David, his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. But Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I have no relations with the man? And the angel said to her in reply, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age. And this is the sixth month for her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible for God. And he said, behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.

Then the angel departed from her. The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you the Lord Jesus Christ. So whenever we have this incredible feast, a Feast of the Immaculate Conception, it's important because we have to clear up a couple things right off the bat that when we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we're not talking about Jesus being conceived. That would be a very short gestational process for Jesus,

or a very long one, which would also... It's about Mary. This feast is about Mary. But whenever we believe about Mary is always a reflection of what we believe about Jesus. And that's the key thing that the catechism teaches. and the church has taught forever is that what we believe about Mary actually has everything little to do with her and everything to do with Jesus. And what has to do with Jesus is about his plan of salvation, his plan of redemption. So what's the doctrine and how does this have to do

with the plan of salvation? And then how does it have to do with us? So the first thing, the doctrine is this, that from the moment of Mary's conception, from the moment of her conception, from the moment of her conception in a natural and normal way, normal way, from the moment of her conception, she was preserved from all stain of original sin by the merits of her son's future life, death, and resurrection. And so a couple of things to keep in mind. One is, from a moment of her conception, no sin. So no original sin.

And also, we believe that she was preserved from all actual sin during the course of her life. So the moment of her conception, no original sin. How? Well, that means Mary doesn't need Jesus. Well, no, actually, Mary needs Jesus. In fact, right after this moment, Mary is going to go visit Elizabeth in the Gospel of Luke. and Elizabeth is going to say, Who am I, that the mother, my lord should come to me?

And Mary will break into the magnificat, this incredible prayer where she calls God her Savior. And so you think, like, wait a second. So Mary knows that God is her Savior. How is God her Savior if she didn't have any sin? She doesn't need any saving from anything. And so here's the analogy. And you've both, you guys have heard this analogy before.

Analogy is, imagine that there is a, I don't know, say, worldwide virus. And this virus is, you're a guaranteed, to get it and B, it's guaranteed to kill you. So even worse than what we lived through the last couple of years. So you're guaranteed to get it. It's guaranteed to kill you. And imagine someone comes along and develops a cure for this virus. And so walks up to Joe, gives Joe the injection, gives him the cure.

That person just saved Joe, right? They're Joe's savior. Wonderful, yes. But what if here's Mary? Mary hasn't gotten the virus yet. She hasn't become sick yet. But this person creates a vaccine. that makes it so that you don't even get the virus in the first place, not even a mild form.

You don't get it at all. And that person with the vaccine comes up to Mary, and before she even gets sick, gives her the vaccine. In that case, that person who developed the vaccine is just as much Mary's savior as that person was Joseph's savior, if that makes any sense. So, yes, God saved Mary. Not just God generally speaking, although Father's Son and Holy Spirit always working together. Jesus Christ saved Mary. Her son saved her. How is that possible? Well, it's by the merits of her son's future life, death, and resurrection.

We say, how does that work? Because here is Mary conceiving Jesus at like maybe 14, 15 years old. Here's Jesus who doesn't go undergo that suffering and passion to another 33 years. So you're saying like 47 years earlier Jesus applies these merits of his life and the resurrection to Mary. And we'd say, yes, how's that happen? It's a mystery in the sense of this, in the sense that, we've experienced the same thing. Jesus died, rose, and ascended to heaven 2,000 years ago. And yet you and I experience the merits of his life, death, and resurrection in our lives right now. And so if God can extend his mercies, extend his grace to your life and to my life,

halfway around the world, 2,000 years after the fact, God who lives outside of time can also rewind a little bit. He can, he's out, he doesn't have to rewind, he's outside time. So he can distribute that grace, that particular. grace of preserving Mary from all state of original sin 47 years before the event of his life, death and resurrection. If that makes any sense, that kind of makes sense, at least. So, Mary is preserved from all the state of original sin. So God is her Savior by the merits of her son's life, death, and resurrection. Even though she's before Jesus was conceived, those merits are applied to her

in time, which is incredible. There's two things that come up as a problem, though. One is, well, why? why, if God can do this, and he can, he did, with Mary, then why doesn't he do this with all of us? And that's why this has everything to do with Jesus. We heard in the first reading today, the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 3. And we know that in Genesis chapter 3, you have this man without sin and this woman without sin. And an angel of light, right? Lucifer is the serpent. Lucifer is the angel of light.

Lucifer means light bearer. Lucifer goes to the woman. he speaks words to her that cause her to disbelieve and disobey, she then turns, hands that disobedience and disbelief to the man, who then hands it to the world. So Adam and Eve, this sinless couple, gets spoken to by this angel of light, and they hand on disbelief and disobedience to the world. They're the fall team.

In the New Testament, St. Paul calls Jesus the new Adam. He's the new Adam who hands on life through his belief, his trust, right, and his obedience to his father. he hands on life to all of us. So here's sinless Jesus, sinless Adam, sinless Eve. If Jesus is the new Adam, couldn't there be a new Eve? What we hear in today's gospel is the same story. Here is a woman. And an angel of light comes to her and speaks words to her that cause her to believe and obey. And she then hands on that belief in obedience to the man, her son Jesus, who hands on belief and obedience, salvation to all of us.

So it fits, right, that if Adam and Eve, the fall team, were both without sin, and the new Adam, part of the redemption team is without sin, then Mary the new Eve. It's fitting that she would be without sin. If she has this role to fulfill, then God would give her everything she needs to fulfill that role, and this is so important for all of us. Why didn't God just do that for us? essentially is because he didn't need to

because you and I weren't called to be the new Eve. We're not called to be the new Adam. We're called to be the new you, essentially. That God gives every person, everything they need to accomplish the mission that he has for them. He gave Mary this preservation from all original sin from the moment of her conception because that was her vocation, that was her mission, that was her call.

And so in your life and in my life, God will give everything that you need to accomplish that mission. Question, do you believe that? Will you choose to live that? Because just like Adam Eve handed on disbelief and disobedience, and just like Mary and Jesus handed on belief and obedience, we get the chance to either disbelieve and disobey or to trust God and to obey him, to believe him and to obey him. Because that's in so many ways, the secret of Mary. In so many ways, Mary's secret is not that she was so powerful, she was so incredible,

she was so beautiful, she was so wise. Her secret is that when God asked her to move, she moved. A word we kind of used sometimes in like church circles is she was willing to yield. Now, it's not to say Mary was passive. Mary wasn't passive, just, you know, move me around. when God asked her through the angel Gabriel that if she would be willing to become the mother of her of his son Mary wasn't forced into this she wasn't just moved around she had free will she could have said no imagine this reality the reality is Mary could have said no just like Eve said no just like Adam said no

just like you and I say no Mary could have said no but she was willing to yield in her free will she wasn't passive, she was what you might call, like, receptive. So, and this is like the secret for, like, the Christian life is sometimes we think that yielding is simply, again, being passive. The yielding is just kind of sitting back and like, look at God, do whatever you need to do, go ahead and do it. But it's not. It's, it's that word receptive. We want to, we want to harness receptivity in our lives. And the best, best image I can have of someone who's receptive, a receptivity is, I'm going to ask you guys this. Do you guys know, remember, you know what the name's Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? Okay, some people remember the people, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

And so I use this example and it's becoming more and more dated because it said that Fred Astaire, they're a dance partner, they're a dance couple. So it said that Fred Astaire was the greatest dancer of the last hundred years. Last century, Fred Astaire, incredible dancer. Now, his partner was Ginger Rogers. And so typically anyone says, you know, the greatest dancer of the last hundred years was Fred Astaire. it's worth noting that Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.

So there's very good dancers. But here's the crazy thing. It just blows my mind when I found this out, that Fred Astaire was the professional dancer. Ginger Rogers wasn't a professional dancer. She was an amateur dancer. That Fred Astaire had a ton of dance partners over the course of his career because he's professional. But he loved dancing with Ginger Rogers. She's talented.

She's gifted. She worked hard. When he said he loved dancing with Ginger. Rogers because she was an amateur. You know how dancing goes, right? Classically, the male leads and the female follows. That doesn't mean that the male drags her around the dance floor. It means that when he moves, she's receptive. Then when he moves, she yields to that movement. She cooperates. They have this again. That's why it's called dancing. They dance together. And so as the man leads, here is Ginger Rogers who would see where he's leading, say yes to that,

and go along with him. And this is what we're invited to do as well. This is what Mary did. Here's the angel Gabriel who comes to Mary and says, okay, here's the father's plan in your life. And she didn't just have to do it. She could have said no. But God had given her every gift to be able to say yes. All she had to do was say yes, to be receptive and simply move when she was invited.

to move. And this is the secret for sanctity. This is the secret for holiness. Reseptivity. My invitation for all of us here, the last thing. My invitation for all of us is in our prayer to have at least a moment of prayer, especially as we're doing this, you know, 29 minutes and 29 days for this season of Advent, at least have a time in prayer to be able to ask God, okay, God, are you asking me to move at all? Are you asking me to shift at all? Are you asking me, where are you asking me to yield to you? And almost always, it's when we hear the Word of God proclaimed. Almost always it's when we hear God's word, whether in the scripture readings for the day,

whether your own private devotional reading, that is God's word inviting us to move. Or inviting us to stay. Always inviting us to be receptive. God will give you exactly what he gave Mary, which is everything you need. to accomplish His will in your life. We ask Mary to pray for us today because she said yes. We ask her to help us to say yes as well.