Perfectly Incredible; Incredibly Perfect

“Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Luke 1:28

Nothing seems to divide Catholics from the rest of Christendom so much as our unyielding devotion to Mary. If our salvation comes through the grace of the merits of Christ alone, why do we distract ourselves so much with these dogmas that seem to elevate her to a status that a casual observer might call “goddess”? The simple answer, of course, is that understanding who Mary is helps us to understand who God is. Put another way, to have created Mary to be any less than perfect, and to deny her the graces that would help her to maintain that perfection, would be wholly inconsistent with God's very being.

The first Marian dogma that was defined was that she is theotokos, God-bearer, the mother of God. If she were not the mother of Christ in both His humanity and divinity, then the incarnation has no power. God did not simply infuse his essence into a human; He took on humanity as His own nature in the person of Jesus. Though the other dogmas of Mary teach us about God's nature in a much less direct way, if we realize that they help our understanding of God in the same way this one does, we can at least begin to appreciate why they have been defined, and why they are so important.

What, then, does Mary's Immaculate Conception tell us about God? Among other things, it manifests God's utter incompatibility with sin. In the Old Testament, nothing was as unapproachable as the Ark of the Covenant, safeguarded in the Holy of Holies. The Ark was made to perfection, and treated as perfection because it held the written Word of God—the tablets of the ten commandments. Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, carried in her womb the incarnate Word of God—Jesus. Not only must Jesus be without sin, but it was not possible for sin to bear Him (cf. Acts 2:24).

While the Immaculate Conception clearly illustrates this characteristic of what God is not, it points also to a very tangible expression of what God is: family, of which the essence is love. As the Son is one with the Father, he prays that we will be one with Him. In a unique way, Mary's relationship with the Godhead embodies the full spectrum of familial love. She is daughter to the Father; she is mother to the Son; and she is spouse to the Spirit. As the mother and model of the Church, and one of its members, she is also a bride of Christ. This plurality of unities seems to defy our understanding of these relationships. How can she be mother, bride, and sister of Christ? How can she the bride of Christ if she conceives by the Spirit and is betrothed to Joseph? How can she simultaneously hold such a diversity of relationships with God?

Rather than deny these truths because they defy our understanding, we must conclude that our understanding is incomplete, and these truths illumine it. The nuptial bonds of marriage are not identical to the union we will have with Christ as his bride, nor are they the end to which Scripture points when it says man and woman will become “one flesh”. Rather, the end is a mysterious union with God in a familial bond, simultaneously prefigured and actualized in the Eucharist, and most perfectly exemplified by Mary.

This all sounds fantastic and incomprehensible and intangible. It can make us wonder how we can hope to cross the chasm that separates us from the perfection lived in Mary's life. How misguided is any such despair! Quite the contrary, Mary is the very source of our confidence! By her example, we know that we need not be divine to have the grace of faith that justifies us. For, though she was without original sin, she still had free will. If Eve, with no stain of sin, fell to the pride to which the serpent enticed her, surely Mary had such freedom. Yet she was favored. (I don't know why the bishops prefer that translation to “full of grace”.) The Lord was with her. And we know we have the Spirit of the Lord within us. If we can only humble ourselves to accept the grace He freely gives us with those famous words of Mary—“May it be done to me according to your word”—then we can be confident in our hope that we will share in the eternal union promised to us.

Immaculate Conception,
Be our hope, that we may live to see the fulfillment of God's promise.
Be our light, showing us the way of your Son.
Be our mother, comforting us with your unfailing love.
Be our sister, encouraging us to obedience of our Father.
And be our constant companion, to the hour of our death, that we might always seek in this world to model the spotlessness that leads to the peace of the world to come.