Mary, the Immaculate Conception

Through Jesus Christ, we are adopted into a new family, a holy family, a transformed family, a redeemed family on the road to eternal salvation.  The first member of this family is Mary, born without sin, who gives birth to Jesus, to the Son of God made man, taking on human nature.  God would come to dwell in each one of us, beginning with Mary's "yes." He entered her sinless nature, her womb, at that "yes."

God's plan from the beginning of the world was unfolding and continues to unfold in our lives. Goodness, which is rooted in our very nature, would take on evil.  Jesus also says "yes" to God's holy will, unlike Adam and Eve, who disobey God in the Garden of Eden and unlike the Chosen People, who over and over again on their journey to the Promised Land, followed their own will instead of God's.  Jesus is the new Adam and the New Israel, obedient to the Father unto death.

Through that obedience, you and I become adopted children of God. We become part of the Holy Family, "blessed...in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as [God] chose us in [Christ], before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him." The only way we appear "without blemish before him," is through the blood of Christ poured out upon us from the cross. "In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ," Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12, "in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved."

Yes! our destiny is both Mary's destiny and the  destiny of Jesus, the first born of the dead.  The gates of heaven, closed to us when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, was opened to us when Mary and Jesus said "yes," a yes that took Mary to the foot of the cross and nailed Jesus on the cross for our salvation.  Our "yes" will also take us to the foot of the cross, to endure the suffering of saying "no" to sin and "yes" to God every day of our lives. May we realize that God meets us in each of those situations to help us in our weakness, to strengthen our resolve to say "yes" as Mary and Jesus (and Joseph) did.