The Feast of the 1Immaculate Conception 8 December 2012 Fr. David Harrison Rector, Church of St.

Mary Magdalene, Toronto If youll pardon the rather monstrous pun, there are a lot of misconceptions about this feast day. In popular consciousness, the feast of Marys Immaculate Conception is commonly misunderstood as being synonymous with the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Although, if this were to be the case, the result would be a miraculously short gestation period of only seventeen days! But no our calendar observes the natural course of pregnancies. The Churchs calendar celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25th and nine months later Christmas Day. And the Churchs calendar celebrates the moment that Mary was conceived on December 8th, and her birth, precisely nine months later, on September 8th. The Church has celebrated the time of Marys conception on this day December 8th since the fifth century. In the Western Church, the belief that Marys conception was immaculate began to take hold not too many centuries later. Attaching the idea of her conception as immaculate said nothing at all about the process by which she was conceived by her parents, whom we know by tradition as Anne and Joachim. Nor did it say anything about whether Mary, herself, committed actual sin. Rather, the word immaculate indicates the belief that, from the very moment of her conception, Mary was preserved free from all stain of original sin. That is to say that, whereas you and I, and everyone else who was and is and is to come, share in the reality of original sin the reality that humankind is fallen, sinful, imperfect, broken Mary did not. To be clear, what this doctrine asserts is that Mary received, at the moment of her conception, what you and I received at the moment of our baptisms which is sanctifying grace, which overcomes the fallen state of humanity into which we are born, and through which we are transformed into holy children of God and adopted as Gods own. The immaculate conception of Mary asserts that this sanctifying grace was given to Mary not at baptism, but at the moment of her conception. Now, it needs to be said that the process by which the idea the Immaculate Conception became doctrine was neither quick nor smooth. No less a theologian than St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteen century, rejected the idea that Marys conception was Immaculate and (in his view) erroneously asserting that Mary was not in need of a saviour. Indeed, it was not until 1854 when Pope Pius IX promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and made it a matter of faith for all Roman Catholics. It also needs to be said that whereas there are Anglicans who observe this feast, and who attach the word Immaculate to it, as we do here today, the idea of Marys Immaculate Conception is long, long way from the consciousness of most Anglicans. And, indeed, (and I can hear the words of Fr.Stephen Reynolds ringing in my ears as I say this), believing in the immaculate conception of Mary is not a matter of salvation, or obligation, for Anglicans. Some may; none must. However this is not to say that Anglicans have been uninterested in the belief that Marys

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conception was both holy and immaculate. Since 1969, various iterations of the joint AnglicanRoman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) have produced joint statements on a range of theological and ecclesiological matters, including its fairly recent joint statement, published in 2005, entitled Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ. In that statement, Anglican and Roman Catholic theologians state their agreement that the teaching of Marys Immaculate Conception (and, I might add, her Assumption into heaven) are consonant with the teaching of the scriptures and ... ancient common traditions. Whats more, this Anglican-Roman Catholic joint statement upholds that in view of [Marys] vocation to be the mother of the Holy One, we can affirm together that Christs redeeming work reached back in Mary to the depths of her being, and to her earliest beginnings. That is to say, that Mary, in her vocation as theotokos bearer of God was kindled in her from the moment of her conception. Now I presume you didnt come here this morning for a theological lecture, nor to be drawn into a controversy about whether the word Immaculate is in or out in our celebration of Marys conception. And, truth be told, Im with Fr. Reynolds on this one. No one need hold onto the immaculateness of Marys conception for dear life in negotiating the economy of Gods salvation. But I would offer this thought. This feast day always falls within the season of Advent. It has been pointed out that our experience of time, in Advent, is wonky. We navigate between looking backward to the first advent of the Son of God the babe of Bethlehem. And we also look forward, with longing and anticipation, to the second advent of the Son of God, when Christ will come and usher in the fullness of Gods kingdom. And we also dwell in the now in what Thomas Merton calls the third Advent the coming of Jesus into our hearts and minds and souls day by day, hour by hour. There is a timelessness in Advent suspended as we are between the first and second Advents. And that timelessness is of God, for God is both of our time and our moments, and utterly independent of our time and our moments. Surely this is what those Anglican and Roman Catholic theologians together are proclaiming when they say that Christs redeeming work reached back in Mary to the depths of her being, and to her earliest beginnings. That God, in Gods economy of salvation, is not bound by the constraints of our sense of chronological time, chronos, but acts in sacred time, chairos. This season of Advent in which we celebrate Marys conception is timeless, and will lead us once again to our celebrations of the birth to a young woman Mary in time of the timeless Son of God. And that, of all of the great mysteries of faith, is surely the greatest. For as the angel Gabriel said to Mary nothing is impossible with God!

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