Sermon for Immaculate Conception 2019ーOSAKA
Fr Peter Fortin, FSSPX
For this beautiful feast of the Immaculate Conception, we commemorate Our Lady being kept free from any stain of sin, most especially the original sin. Why did God grant this so great privilege to Our Lady? For this sermon I will relate about the privilege of the Immaculate and also how it relates to another privilege of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix of the human race.
According to a Jesuit Father about a century ago, Fr. Leen, he writes about Our Lady in a very beautiful manner. In the third Chapter of the book of Genesis is recorded the terrible fall of the human race. There is involved a man, woman, tree and a serpent (devil). The serpent deceived the woman, and the woman scandalized the man (caused him to sin by disobedience) getting him to eat of the fruit. In order to correct the situation, God will reverse everything: a woman and her offspring (the Man) would conquer the devil by means of a tree (the cross). The same will correct the terrible situation in a most beautiful and fitting manner. We will see the similarities and differences between the Fall and the Redemption and between Eve and Our Lady.
Adam and Eve were at their beginning the greatest of all humans, the perfect couple. Created in original justice, they were filled with God’s grace and did not know any evil, no deprivation of any good, either spiritually or physically. By their sin, they cause their own deaths, physically but worst spiritually as well. Losing the friendship of God. Doomed to suffer on earth many years and then die of extreme old age.
After them, when the fullness of time had come, there came the absolute greatest humans Our Lady and then Our Lord. These two were the only Humans conceived without sin as our first parents. Our Lord entered the world without a father just like Adam.
The First Woman, Eve was named the mother of all the living because from her was the natural life of all mankind. The second Eve was to be the Mother of God and of all those living by His grace. Adam and Eve were two in one flesh in paradise. Eve was formed from the body of Adam but they together formed one. Just as Our Lord and Our Lady were of one flesh, so Our Lord took His Body entirely from Our Lady, and so she resembled as closely as possible as a creature by the fullness of the Grace that she received. This is the reason for this great privilege of the Immaculate Conception, that she would be the Mother of God. She would need to be Holy and completely free from any trace of sin.
In the Fall, Eve played a necessary role in our Redemption. Without her there most likely would not have been the Original Sin and then no need for Redemption or the Incarnation. The sin transmitted to the entire human race by Adam and yet that sin passed through the womb to Eve. They sinned together and so they transmitted it together. They were one in their creation, in their fall and the race that came from them.
Just as Eve was completely united with Adam for the event of the Fall, so Our Lady was completely united with Our Lord for the redemption. The Sacred and Immaculate Hearts were one physically and spiritually in the work of the redemption in redeeming man. Just as the devil corrupted the head of Eve with pride, so it is his head crushed by the humility of Our Lady by her accomplishing the act of redemption with her son in a necessary but secondary role. According to Pope St. Pius X “It can be said that with [her Son] she redeemed the human race. By the fact that Our Lady is the mother of Our Lord, she participated in every aspect of the life of Our Lord especially in regards to the redemption.”
We see how involved Our Lady is in the Redemption of man, by bringing forth Our Lord. How she would help to redeem the human race beyond bringing Our Lord into the World and nurturing Him. The word Redemption means to buy back. Men had committed many terrible crimes, many terrible sins which caused a great injustice towards God, the original sin and then the subsequent actual sins. Satisfaction or payment must made with this injustice. The acts had to be supernatural and meritorious and only worthy of God Himself. But to make payment then the acts must be painful as there is a cost involved.
Our Lord paid by offering Himself; Our Lady paid by offering her Son. Our Lord paid by shedding His Blood; Our Lady paid by presenting the Blood to the Eternal Father. All throughout her life, Our Lady was united with Our Lord in His perfect conformity to the Will of the Father and in the perfection of the virtues, humility, poverty and suffering. But she was particularly united to Him in the mission of the Redemption and when the time came to offer Himself on the Cross. Our Lady standing at the foot of the cross suffered with Our Lord almost to death, so closely were her sufferings united with Our Lord. Because of this union of suffering then it has merited Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and Co-Redemptrix. It is most true; those who love more, suffer more. Love is not possible without suffering. Since Our Lady had a special triple love that no other creature could possess. 1. The pure love of an undefiled virgin. 2. The natural love of a mother. 3. The innocent love of a sinless creature. For all the rest of creatures only one is possible. Because she alone is Virgin and Mother and she alone is the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Heart is the most loving of all hearts and so most suffering after the Sacred Heart.
Our Lady witnessed the passion and death of Our Lord, Her most innocent Son and then laid him in the tomb and had to walk away from him. If we look back in the Old Testament when Abraham was called by God to sacrifice his precious son Isaac, but who is nothing in comparison with Our Lord. No angel came and stopped the crucifixion as the angel stopped the hand of Abraham from killing his own son. The Best of all Sons was taken and killed from the most loving of all mothers.
Our Lady could not pay for our own redemption in infinite proportion but according to her limited capacity. St. Thomas writes that it is a wonderful thing that any saint has grace sufficient for the salvation of many souls but imagine Our Lady who has grace sufficient for all mankind which is found in Our Lord and in Our Lady.
The doctrine of Co-Redemptrix is part of God’s plan for the redemption of man. It was His Eternal Plan to reverse the Fall of man completely by woman and by a God/Man to accomplish. He provided a new mother, a better mother for the human race, one that does not dialogue with the devil and who destroys him by her humility and self-sacrificing nature. Instead of sinful children born to destruction and death, but children born light, grace and life. In regards to the fall of Adam and Eve, God called forth a new Adam and a new Eve to redeem man. In a certain sense we can be happy with the fault that produced a Redeemer but also that produced such a great Co-Redemptrix. Let us give thanks to God especially for granting this great privilege of the Immaculate Conception to Our Lady by which her other privileges were possible.