Are you familiar with the phrase “a blessing and a curse”? Usually, people use it in reference to themselves, about some personality trait they have that is both helpful and also a hindrance. For example, having a really great memory is certainly a blessing if you’re trying to recall someone’s name, but it could be a kind of curse as well if you have trouble forgetting painful or difficult memories.
The Church has long viewed humanity’s sinfulness in precisely this double-edged way, except reversed: as a curse and as a blessing. In the first reading, we heard about how the sin of disobedience committed by our first parents unleashed all of the terrible things we experience in life: pain, sorrow, death. The fundamental disunity and discord that is at the heart of all of our negative experiences is not God’s doing – rather it is the fruit of humanity’s own sinfulness, begun first by Adam and Eve and then continued by each of us.
But as much as sin has been a curse for humanity, as Christians we also understand that without our sinfulness, we would not have received the greatest blessing God has ever given us – Jesus. On the night before Easter each year, the Church sings in its Vigil liturgy an ancient hymn of joy, including one line about how the disobedience of Adam and Eve is a “felix culpa,” a “happy fault.” In other words, our sin is a kind of self-curse, but God also used it as a blessing, since it is because of our sinfulness that He sent his Only-Begotten Son as our Savior and Redeemer. Through Jesus, we have human beings have received “every spiritual blessing in the heavens”, in the words of St. Paul, not only healed of our sinfulness but also raised to become co-heirs with Christ of all that God has promised.
Today, we recall that God’s blessings upon humanity began even before Jesus was born. God’s plan to redeem us from the ancient curse of sin commenced with the Immaculate Conception of Jesus’ Mother, Mary, when God preserved her from the stain of original sin that has marked every human being after Adam and Eve. God foresaw that Mary would perfectly accept God’s will for her to be our Lord’s Mother, and so at the moment of her conception he applied to her the grace of Christ’s future passion. Mary, then, is the first one who has been remade by God’s grace – the fullness of her being is a blessing, untouched and unhindered by sinfulness.
As we celebrate the amazing way in which God acted in the life of Mary, perhaps there is a chance for each of us to reflect upon how God has acted in our own lives. Do I recognize sin and disobedience to God’s will as the source of much of the pain and sorrow in my own life? Do I thank God for how he has healed me of sin’s curse, and transformed me by his blessing, first at my baptism and then each time that I receive his grace, especially in the sacraments? Am I willing to listen to what his plan might be for my life, as Mary did, and proclaim the Lord’s greatness by following his will rather than my own?
Friends, our Mother Mary is the “New Eve,” the Mother of all those who live not under the curse of sin but in the blessing of being God’s adopted children in Christ. Through God’s grace, she is the instrument by which his plan of redemption begins, and she continues to intercede for each of us, that we might be always free of the ancient curse of sinfulness and receive all of the blessings that God has in store for us. As we continue through this Advent season, may we continue to praise the Lord for how he invites each of us – through his grace, and with his blessing – to respond with Mary’s “Yes” to our part in the mystery of redemption.
No comments:
Post a Comment