Friday December 8, 2017
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
If today’s feast is to be about more than the ‘privileges’ of Mary, we need to see it in the light of the second reading of the Mass: “God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world, to be holy and without sin in his presence” (Eph 1:4). God’s great project: a humanity that doesn’t flee from his presence, full of shame like Adam and Eve, but which he can draw to himself in Christ, through the Spirit. Mary is God’s “sign of favor to the Church at its beginning, and the promise of its perfection as the bride of Christ, radiant in beauty....” (Preface of today’s Mass). She is a model of the Church as it is going to be in God’s time. “In her there shines out already the future splendor of the Church, just as the entire blue vault of heaven is reflected in a drop of morning dew” (Raniero Cantalamessa).
