Tuesday, 8 Dec 2020 (Immaculate Conception) Gn 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-12; Lk 1:26-38
Back in 2002, I went to Hawaii so that a newly ordained friend of mine could celebrate Mass for his family who could not come to his ordination here in our Archdiocese. My friend is from the island of Oahu, which is where Pearl Harbor is.
While we were there we went to another island, the Big Island, called Hawaii, and we visited Volcano National Park. We traveled around the crater of the Kilauea Volcano and found a vast area that was totally barren. It looked like what you might imagine walking on the moon would look like. The entire area was a smooth dark gray rock surface with a lot of individual rocks and boulders of all sizes sitting on the surface.
As we walked, in the designated area, a good way back from the crater rim, out of nowhere a tiny glint of color caught my eye. In the midst of the crater’s vast barren dark moonlike surface, I saw a tiny green plant emerging from the ground in the shadow of a small boulder and at the top of the little plant a flower was blossoming.
If we could imagine that the barren wasteland around that crater is like the tremendous gloom of darkness that is the sin of our world, we might also be able to imagine that the sight of a small, majestic, flower bursting forth with life, in that sea of desolation, could represent the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Mother Mary.
God’s grace rescued Mary from the evil of Original Sin and made Mary Immaculate so that Mary could be the Mother of Jesus, God’s Son. Mary’s Immaculate Conception made her the perfectly pure vessel to contain the Son of God.
Anyone who has ever been to Hawaii cannot help but be moved by the lush beauty of the plant life there: the bright greens splashed with vivid colors of flowers covering the mountains. But it wasn’t always that way. It started with volcanic eruptions, the flow of molten lava, which, once cooled, became that dark gray moonlike surface, where, it would seem, nothing could live, and nothing could grow.
Mary’s Immaculate Conception proved that our world was not destined to stay in the dark either. God’s grace would make a way. In that darkness God planted, Mary, a beautiful pure flower that would become the vessel for his Son, Jesus, to enter our world and make it possible that each of us could be freed from the darkness and become a new garden that would bring life and beauty back to our world.
God’s grace, the grace that has allowed all this to happen, is part of our lives too. What will we do with that grace?
That little flower by the crater, in Hawaii, must have had some pretty good roots to survive such an inhospitable environment. The same needs to be true for us in our spiritual lives as well.
Taking a cue from our Blessed Mother, Mary, we too need to say “yes” to God so that we can grow and blossom and then invite others to experience God’s grace and love and salvation. It is week 2 of Advent. No time like the present to share that with others.