Today the Catholic Church celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception--yes, we believe and the Catholic Church has proclaimed that Mary was free of sin from the moment of her conception! Jesus took on humanity in her pure body!
Mary was conceived without sin. You and I were redeemed from sin. We open today's liturgy with a prayer of praise concerning the gift of salvation: "I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation, and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, like a bride adorned with her jewels." How generous is our God! God's intent is that we are one with Him forever. Satan's intent is to bar us from eternal life with God. He began his pursuit of that goal in the Garden of Eden, where he tempted both Adam and Eve. Both fell to his lies of becoming like God and that the limits of not eating of a certain fruit were foolish. God's instruction: "You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil; when you eat from it you shall die." Cunningly, Satan approached Eve and asked: "Did God really say, 'You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden?" After placing that doubt in Eve's mind, Satan says: "You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.' The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom, so she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." The rest of the story is history and Satan has been at work ever since, doing to us what he did to Adam and Eve and every day people get caught in Satan's trap!
Satan may be powerfully cunning, a liar who sets traps for us and gets us, many times, in our weakest spot, our desire to be a god, to be subject to no one, to rely totally on ourselves as "know-it-alls" who put our hands over our ears when someone tries to awaken us to the wrong in which we might be engaged.
God knows our vulnerabilities and that is why God clothes us with a "robe of salvation" and wraps us "in a mantle of justice." Through Mary's intercession and by virtue of Jesus' death on the cross to save us from Satan's power, may you and I, now and forever, be cleansed of our sin and embrace salvation as it is offered to us over and over again, especially when, like Adam, we know our nakedness and hide from God, recognizing that we have fallen for Satan's lies!
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