The Immaculate Conception is the First Fruit


The Immaculate Conception is the First Fruit
Sin comes second; it only exists as a parasite, when we let it have some room in a life made only for life and light. Our true being has its roots in God. Hence the great work of conversion, the return to our origins—not to the womb, but to allow ourselves be birthed again, in the truth—by letting the Spirit work in us through Mary’s faith, as though we were in her womb.

We must therefore accept the Passover, the passage into the world of grace—God's world. Our being is redesigned in the darkness of Holy Saturday. Our habitual world disappears, along with its demands for visible accomplishment and successful competition. Humanity opens up to the call of a life lived under the sign of communion. I think that individuals and even society cannot do without being called back to life received by grace. Mary is the completed figure of the new world that only subsists on trust in a God who cannot be conquered by any form of darkness, a God whose mercy is confirmed by the sight of the water and the blood flowing from the side opened by the lance of human sin, a God of whom we cannot doubt any longer that he is pure gift and forgiveness.

The Immaculate Conception is the first fruit of the madness of this love. The Church believes in this process of forgiveness continually received and shared. With the Immaculate, as mother and model, the Church is covered with the wedding garment of mercy: without it, the Bride be seated at the wedding feast, the meal of the New Covenant. And like the Church, our world must now let itself be immersed in the grace of that new life. It must choose between, on the one hand, the sterility of vain pride alternating with discouragement and, on the other, the fecundity of life received through forgiving grace.
Father Andre Cabes , The Immaculate Conception, Good News for Our Time.
Basilica of Verdelais, December 5, 2009

May God bless you!

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