Conflict Resolution: The Immaculate Conception of Mary

Every good story has a conflict. Think of a bestselling book, or a hit movie, or just an account that you might tell your friends over coffee. A story doesn’t engage us, doesn’t capture our attention unless it contains tension: something valuable at stake, some fundamental problem to be resolved. It can be epic or mundane, but there must always be a conflict for a story to revolve around.

The same is true for the story of our salvation. The 20th century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar titled his 5-part magnum opus the “Theo-Drama”, that is the story of the relationship between God and humanity throughout time. That story too has a conflict, a tension to be overcome. We heard the basics of it in the first reading from Genesis. Adam and Eve have done the one thing God had forbidden them to do, and having sinned their relationship with him has been changed. Not only must they leave Eden; nature itself, including our human nature, is changed by the introduction of sin into the world.

Traditionally, we say that the original sin of Adam and Eve had four effects on us: our intellects were darkened; our wills were weakened; and physical suffering and death – not originally a part of God’s plan – are made a part of our lives. These are not what God wished for us – they are rather the consequence of the choice of our first parents and indeed the choices we make through our own sinfulness. The tension of our story is that God created us for himself – we desire nothing so much as to be in eternal union with God – and yet our own sinful choices made that union impossible.

Or, at least, so it was thought. We’re just about at the midpoint of Advent, and in a few short weeks we will celebrate the day on which the answer to our conflict, the One who resolves our fundamental problem, was born into the world. Jesus is the protagonist in our Theo-Drama, the New Adam whose obedience to his Father undoes the sinful disobedience of our first parents and restores us to union with God. It is through him that God has chosen to bless us – in the words of the Letter to the Ephesians – before the foundation of the world, to be destined for adoption through Christ that we also might be made “sons and daughters” of God. Jesus doesn’t just restore what Adam and Eve took away, he gives us something far greater. He doesn’t open the gate back to Eden; he throws open the gates to heaven.

Gustave Moreau, Pietà (1854)

In every story, there is a moment when the protagonist takes decisive action, when he or she seeks to tackle the fundamental problem head on to resolve it. Today, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, we celebrate the very first moment when God acted through Jesus in history. It is not the conception of Jesus that we celebrate (that’s in March) but rather the conception of Mary, when God foresaw in his eternal wisdom Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and through the grace that comes from his Son’s obedience preserved Mary from the original sin of our first parents. God acted decisively not only to create a perfect, fitting vessel for his Son. He did so also to remind us that, like Mary, our human nature has been created for perfection, which is nothing short of total union with God.

Friends, if I might offer a bit of advice in these last few weeks of Advent, don’t sell yourself short on your role in the Theo-Drama. The story of God and humanity began with Adam and Eve, and reached its climax in the person of Jesus, but each of us has an important role to play it in as well. What God did for Mary, he desires to do for each of us; we need only submit our wills to be in accord with His, just as she did. Prepare for the coming of our Savior with a heart that yearns for nothing but to be with him, where every conflict is resolved, where every tear is wiped away. The great story has been written, and you have a part in it. How will you play it?

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