At the very beginning God created Adam and Eve in a state termed “original justice”, which indicated God’s desire for our happiness. In this state human beings received some very significant gifts. In brief, we received “infused knowledge, impassibility and immortality.” As you know with the act of disobedience those gifts were forfeited and death became a part of our life. But now God took the humblest of all His Creations and restored those gifts to her. These gifts mark the Immaculate Conception with a distinction which we must contemplate seriously.
Imagine an artist at work seeking to make a perfect picture and at his completion some foolish child mars the picture with spilled milk. For a second time the artist goes to work and when it is completed a dog comes and claws it to death. Frustration might set in and the artist might think “What is the use?” Well, he says, God began His art work with the angels and some of them chose to be devils. Then with man He had great hopes but again man sought to grasp at equality with God and fell just like the devils. Despite these two failures God conceived a woman so humble and fair. That He chose this woman to be granted original justice.
In Mary He restored the infused knowledge that would humble her and grant her the ability to understand the hand of God at work in all creation. She would know the words of the prophets and the struggles her people would endure due to original sin and personal sin. She would be capable of understanding far beyond what the fallen angels and fallen man could comprehend. Unlike the fallen beings the humble virgin recognized that all was a gift from God and she was but dust privileged to be the perfect image of the Son she would bear.
United with the gift of infused knowledge Mary could not be touched by that effect of sin which we call sickness. The purity of her entire being could not be touched by the effect of sin in the body. Sickness, leprosy, blindness all caused by the sin that flows through the pathways of our blood could not penetrate the purity of the blood within her chaste body. Our Lady was perfectly healthy and only in her freely accepting a dormition would she experience a bit of what it means for us to die.
Finally, our Lady, the Immaculate Conception, was immortal. Death could not touch her just as it could not touch her Son unless He willed it. Immortality is a reality that floods our intellect. Psychology proclaims that none of us can even imagine our own death. When we sleep and have a near death experience we wake before that dreamlike death can take place. Immortality is the call of our nature and it encourages our nature to choose to do good and avoid evil that we might rest in the heart of the God Who so wondrously created and redeemed us.
In the Immaculate Conception we, her sons and daughters, find the Dream of God made flesh in the humblest of all His Creation. She alone perfectly fulfilled the plan of God for each of His Creation. He is the artist and we are the portraits of His Love. In the love of the Immaculate Conception we receive the gift of an infused knowledge concerning eternity and the disaster of sin in our souls. We want to be like our mother and we do that through prayer, penance and almsgiving. We follow her in the desire to know Jesus in order to love Him more daily and to serve Him for the good of my neighbor. Through her we arrive at the goal of our lives…to be other Jesus’s.
With her we can repeat the poet’s dream:
Lord, you have no hands but our hands
to do your work today.
You have no feet but our feet
to lead others in your way
You have no tongue but our tongues,
to tell men and woman how You lived and died.
And You have no help but our help
to bring others to Your Side.
Let us prepare well to purify our hearts, minds and tongues to proclaim the wonder of the Incarnation. Daily pray your holy rosary, seek out a sacrifice and share your goods with those not so fortunate as you.
In the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Fr. Voigt
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