Homily for Monday, 8 December 2014– Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Monday of the 2nd Week in Advent

St. Kateri School Mass

Readings of the day: Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38

One day last week, one of you, our St. Kateri children, asked me an excellent question while I was greeting you at the doors to our school in the morning. The question was this, if I can remember correctly: How did God create Mary and Jesus?

This isn’t an easy question for me to answer, especially first thing in the morning, but I’ll try here. I have a question for you that may help us to answer how God created Mary and Jesus. My question might help us to understand why we celebrate the day we are celebrating today, called the Immaculate Conception of Mary, “the day God created Mary.”

My question is this: Have any of us ever received a really special gift for Christmas, for a birthday, or for some other occasion? What was the gift? Was it special because somebody put a lot of time and love into choosing the gift for us? Has anybody here ever received a gift that somebody hand-made or had somebody make specially for you?

About two thousand years ago, at Christmastime, God had a special gift in mind for all of us. This gift wasn’t a thing, but a person; God’s own Son, Jesus. How did God make Jesus? First, to make this very special gift to us, Jesus, God needed a lot of time and love. God also needed this baby Jesus to have a mother who would love Jesus as perfectly as God loved his own Son. Not just any mom would do.

Now, aren’t our moms great people who love us very much? Our moms are almost perfect, right? Think of how good our mothers are to us. Now, God needed a mother for Jesus who was even better; who was perfect, because Jesus wasn’t any ordinary baby. Jesus is human just like us, but he’s also God.

Many years before Jesus was born, God chose the girl who would grow up to be the perfect mom to his son Jesus. Who was this girl? This girl’s name was Mary. Not because God had to, but because God can (remember what the angel Gabriel says in our Gospel reading, “Nothing is impossible for God.”), we believe that, from the time when Mary was growing inside her mom, St. Anne, God protected her from sin as long as Mary always said “yes” to God.

What is sin? It is when we do something wrong, which we know is wrong, on purpose. In our first reading, we hear of Adam and Eve and the first sin. How did Adam and Eve sin? They ate the fruit that Satan, the devil disguised as a snake, tricked them into eating even though God had told them not to eat it. That sin made it easier for all human beings after Adam and Eve to sin, and so we call Adam’s and Eve’s sin “original sin.”

Original sin is pretty serious then, right? But this is where God enters the story. From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, God promised to send somebody to defeat Satan and sin: His own son, Jesus. And he chose Mary, from when she was still inside her mom, St. Anne, to be Jesus’ mom.

Even though this was not easy for Mary, she always trusted in God; said “yes” to God. And because she said “yes” to God, our God gave us God’s own Son, Jesus. This is how God created Mary, the most perfect mom; mother to all of us who shows us how always to say “yes” to God. On this day we celebrate Mary, from the time God created her inside her mother, St. Anne, to her most important “yes” to God. And through Mary and her “yes” to God, our God has given us the best gift ever, God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Lord.