I missed Mass yesterday. I’m ticked. I hate it when I miss Mass. It was a Holy Day of Obligation and I just blew it. The one Mass of the day here was at 7 AM, and I just woke my kids up and got ready for work as though it was any other day. But it wasn’t. It was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
This isn’t going to be a long shpiel about how the Immaculate Conception is really Mary’s conception, rather than Jesus’s. I’m just going to point out something that I try to harp on. God’s grace is way bigger than people can imagine.
Jesus didn’t have to turn water into wine at Cana. But he did. He didn’t have to feed 5000 people with enough leftovers for 12 baskets. Why not just enough to get everyone full? When the Apostles were fishing, He didn’t have to load their nets up to the breaking point. A few here and there would have been fine.
He didn’t have to make His Mother conceived without sin, but it was absolutely fitting that He do so. God isn’t just about giving the bare minimum. When He brought forth His Mother, He provided Himself with a vessel and nurturer greater in the order of grace than any other being ever wrought, and yes, that includes the highest of the angels. On a side note, there are some who have actually speculated that the reason for Satan’s fall was that God revealed to the angels that He would make a human creation that, while lower in the order of nature, would outstrip them all in the supernatural order of grace. This was what Satan’s pride could not accept, that a human woman would be placed on a level higher than he. It’s also why God immediately places enmity between Satan and “The Woman” after the Fall. But I digress . . .
He also gave to us a Mother that would be Queen of Heaven and Earth, an honor of which we are all quite undeserving. Could God have saved us without all this? Sure, it wasn’t necessary or anything. But it was most fitting. Be thankful that Our God is so generous as to give us so marvelous a wonder as Our Mother.
3 comments:
If Mary's exalted status was contingent on Satan's fall, how could God have showed this to Satan?
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm just curious.
It is a shame that your church only offers one mass on a required feast day. Luckily for us our church offers 3 masses on that day. Sofi and I hit 12:10pm. I am all about the noon masses on the Holy Days as the evening ones tend to be packed.
Not real happy about the Mass schedule either, but I remind myself that I should be thankful that we have a priest at all.
Re: the contingency of Mary's status. The idea, if I remember correctly, is that you have to fall into the camp that says that the Incarnation would have happened regardless of the Falls of angels and men. God would still have willed to become incarnate through Mary and would have made her the highest of all creations, but such status would not have included an Immaculate Conception.
It's been a while since I've looked through this, but I think that's correct.
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