Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/8/23 The New Eve

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Homily from the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary was preserved from sin by the merits of her Son's life, death, and resurrection. The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is a testament to God's goodness. He gives what we need for the mission to which we have been called. And He calls all of us to enter into deeper relationship with the Family of God by cultivating a relationship with Mary, the Mother of God. Mass Readings from December 8, 2023: 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 and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777.7. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless.

The Lord be with you. Your reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Chapter 1, verse 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. Then 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 are to name him Jesus he will be great and will be called 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 a 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 once called baron. For nothing will be impossible

for God. Mary 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, Lord Jesus Christ. Wait you to have a seat. Just one quick thing. I think one of things that we kind of have to have to do every single time we hit this this solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is not only define it but also define why we need it, why it's important for us. So what is the doctrine or the dogma of the Immaculate Conception? Once again, as I said the beginning of Amas, this is not about Jesus's conception, but ultimately everything we believe about Mary is a reflection of what we believe about Jesus. So even with the Immaculate

Conception, this is not about Mary so much as it is ultimately about Jesus. So what is the dogma? The dogma itself is this. that Mary, so this is her conception, that Mary from the moment of her conception was preserved from all stain of original sin. So she was, she not only never experienced original sin, also never chose sin in her life. So she was preserved from all state of original sin. How? Why? Not because she was perfect, not because, or not because there were her own merits, not because she worked for it, not because she deserved it, not because she earned it, not because she was, you know, cried really, really hard to be good. But the dogma says that Mary was preserved from all

state of original sins by the merits of her sons future life, death, and resurrection. So it's Jesus. So Mary, when she, you know, we heard the gospel today that she hears about Elizabeth at the end of the reading. And so she goes right from that moment, she goes to visit Elizabeth. And when she walked up to Elizabeth and Elizabeth praises the Lord and says, who am I, that the mother, my lord should come to me? The moment the sound of your voice reached my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy.

Mary then launches into the Magnificat where she basically says, My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. God, my Savior. She calls God her Savior. And the reality is that God saved her. But he didn't save her like he saved you and me. He saved us after the fact,

right? That here's what Jesus had done 2,000 years ago through his life, death and resurrection, pouring out his Holy Spirit upon us that 2,000 years later, we can experience his salvation. What he did from Mary was he saved her before she even got sick,

right? She saved her before she even fell. He saved her before she sinned. So just like he saved you and me after our sin or after our even experienced original sin, Jesus, because He's God, was able to, the Father was able to send the Holy Spirit to Mary in her mother's womb from the moment of her conception to preserve her moral state of original sin. And now, this is just so important. Why? Well, the why is, could God have done it otherwise? And the answer, of course, is going to be yes.

God can do whatever he wants. He can do, he's God. He has the authority. He's the ability. He has the power to whatever he wants. He could have done it otherwise, but it's most fitting this way. Why? Well, because in the first reading, we have the beginning of the book of Genesis, right?

Genesis 2 and Genesis chapter 3, we're chapter 3 today. So in Genesis chapter 2, what do you have? You have God who makes this sinless man, Adam. and he makes this sinless woman, Eve, and he places them in the garden. What happens? How does the story unfold? Well, here's this sinless man, a sinless woman. And what happens? An angel of light, remember Lucifer, you know, Satan himself. Lucifer is his name, his proper name, and that means angel of light.

So Lucifer, the angel of light, fallen angel, though, approaches the woman without sin. And he speaks words to her that cause her to disbelieve and disobey. right? Lucifer says, did God really say that you can't eat of any of the fruits of these trees? You know, and then she says, no, we can eat all the trees except for that one. He says, no, no, no, if you do be like God who knows right and wrong, you don't, God doesn't want you to be like him. And so what happens is that first woman, the one without sin, she believes the lies and she disobeys the God who loves her. And then what happens is says, and she took the fruit and handed it to the man, sinless man, who was with her and he also ate it. And now, this is how it goes.

This is the fall story. The story is, here's sinless man, sinless woman. Angel of light goes to the sinless woman, speaks words to her that causes her to disbelieve and disbelieve and disobey. She takes that disbelief and disobedience, hands it to the man. He takes it. He disbelieves. He disobeys.

And hands that brokenness, that disbelief and disobedience to all of us. So how does God restore things? He restores it in essentially, I don't want to say the same way. He restores it in an incredibly fitting, incredibly beautiful way. Because we know that Jesus, St. Paul says, Jesus is the new Adam. He's the new sinless man. It's from him or through him that we get redemption. That salvation comes to us through Jesus. He is our one savior. He's it. He's the one. Jesus is the one who brings us salvation. Question. If there's a sinless man who hands on salvation,

redemption to all of us, is there also, for balance, for symmetry, for fittingness, is there also a sinless woman? Well, yes, not only is there also a sinless woman, but there's also this story we just heard in the gospel today, Luke chapter 1. What happens? Here's the sinless woman. And another angel of light, Gabriel, comes to her, and he speaks words to her that rather than the first woman, Eve, cause her to disbelieve and disobey,

these words lead her to belief and to obedience. Behold, I'm the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word. She takes that belief and obedience. and conceives in her womb. Again, not to my own power. This is all God's doing. And what happens?

She hands on that belief, hands on that obedience to the one who would hand it on to all of us. And so you can see how, again, is it necessary? No. Is it fitting? Yes. That Mary would be without sin. Because in the first story, the fall story, sinless man, sinless woman,

Angel of Light, words of disbelief, disobedience, pass it on to us. In the new story, the new creation, the redemption story, sinless man, sinless woman, angel of light, obedience and belief handing on life to all of us. Now, this is so important for us. Why? Because if we're going to know our story, we have to know the whole story. We can think about so many of our brothers and sisters who don't know this.

So many of our brothers and sisters who don't know the full story, the story that not only has God worked with human beings. In the midst of our brokenness, that God also has preserved at least one human being from sin in order to show us not what their power, not the human being's power, not Mary's power, but to show us his power, to show us his goodness, to show us what you and I get to experience ultimately in our lives. Because what God wants us to ultimately experience is that same freedom, the same intimacy with him, and that same participation in his mission and in his work that Mary got to experience. Now, how do we do that?

Well, this is the last two things. One is we recognize that from the cross, Jesus gave his mother to be our mother, right? So from the cross as Jesus is dying with his last gasping breaths, Jesus says, to the beloved disciple, behold your mother, and to his mom, he says, woman, behold your son. And it says from there on, it says, from that moment on, that beloved disciple took her into his home.

So we realized we're invited to take Mary in 12th, our home. From the cross, Jesus invites us to take Mary into our home. How do we do that? That's a great question. How? There could be any number of ways. But it seems to me that this slumnity of the Immaculate Conception reminds us that we're not necessarily just to take Mary into our homes and let her be our mother in our thoughts or in our affections, but maybe even in our actions. Here's what I mean. A number of years ago. So when I first came to the Lord, there were two kind of avenues. One was confession and the other was prayer and I didn't know how to pray.

And so I looked up a book and it was how to pray the rosary. Actually, it was called Youth Praise the Rosary. And so I started praying the rosary as a 15, 16-year-old. And it was kind of like an everyday thing, almost every day. And throughout high school and college, my love and devotion for Our Lady grew and grew throughout seminary. It was kind of like some waning of that, some kind of like some just like, well, I mean, yeah, I'll occasionally play a rosary when it's convenient. And then even I have to kind of confess, I guess I'm actually confessing,

that as a priest, it was a rosary, I saw the rosary is optional. And I guess in some ways we realize that in some ways the church says it's optional. It's called a private devotion and the church does not demand that all Catholics pray the rosary. But here's the interesting thing. From the cross, Jesus said, that's your mom, you're her child. But I think about, again, what happened was one of the mom with one of our students, one came, once came here and gave a talk. And in her talk, it was in the backyard out here, she said something that stuck with me and

convicted me. She said that, you know, we all know all of the marrying apparitions that have happened in the last couple of centuries, even within the last century or two. And she said, you know, what was the message of all those marrying apparitions? Well, you know, repent, do penance. But one of the consistent messages in these Marian apparitions was pray the wrong. rosary. And I, of course, I heard that. I knew that. But I also kind of dismissed it. And she said, but wait a second. Mary's not God. She's clearly not God. Right. So if she's appearing and she has a message, that's because God himself has a message that he wants to communicate to the world

through Mary. And what was that message? That God himself wants to have an apparition, this amazing miracle happen so that the whole world can know This is what God wants his people to do now. So repent, of course. Do penance, yes. Wait, and pray the rosary. And when she said that, I was so convicted. It was, oh, I've been approaching this as if this was optional.

I forgot that from the cross, Jesus said, no, that's your mom. I had never been aware. I'd never thought it through. I never processed it. That whenever Mary had appeared and she says, pray the rosary, that's because God himself has a message for his people, and that message for his people is pray the rosary. So my invitation is Advent's already started.

Not only is this Advent, the shortest Advent could be possibly be, right? So the fourth Sunday of Advent is Christmas Eve Day. So it is the shortest Advent possible, according to our calendar. And we're already into it. So here's the grace you get. The grace is shortest Advent challenge ever. But here's the Advent challenge. is to take Mary into your home, to let her be your mother,

to pray the rosary every day, from today to Christmas Day. Not because Father Mike thinks this is a good idea, not because I think this is just a nice thing to do, but because it seems to me that God has given us this solemnity today as a reminder of all of the messages that he is given to us through the apparitions of Mary that have happened over the last number of years where God has said to us through her, pray the rosary, to be committed for just the next umpteen days

to simply say, okay, God, for you, because you asked me to, I'll pray the rosary. And in that, what do we get to be? Not like Eve, who disbelieved and disobeyed, but like Mary. We said, okay, God, because you asked me to. I believe, I'll obey. This Advent, my invitation, God's invitation to all of us. Pray the rosary each day because he's asked us to.