INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily is, “Maculate Deception.”
It’s a play on words for starters - today being the feast
of the Immaculate Conception. I’m trying to catch your attention - and maybe
get you to read this homily or sermon - so as to reflect on how we do life - or
how life happens to us. It can be clean and neat - and it can be streaky and
sneaky.
Hopefully, you’ll see that my title, “Maculate Deception”
is more than a cute play on words. This
is a very serious topic.
The challenge will be: to imitate Mary’s life - filled
with grace - or to die a life that is stained with too many deceptions.
IMMACULATE
CONCEPTION
Translation: God - the Invisible God - wanted to walk and
talk in our midst in a new way. God wanted to be better noticed, recognized,
accepted, understood by us - so this God decides to become human in time.
So God comes as a baby - a tiny baby - born of a woman.
God!
We’re talking about God here - becoming a baby….
Definitely different….
But before we get there, we have to go backwards to God
preparing the mother to be - when she was conceived by her parents.
God does something different here. God conceives of the
mother of this baby to be immaculate - and so she was conceived in her mother’s
womb - immaculate. She would be original
by being without original sin.
This is a mystery - along with the teaching that all of
us have original sin - within us. We are good. We are beautiful. We are blessed.
But we can also be flawed.
An iddy biddy
little beautiful baby called me - can be flawed - picking up bad example and
bad habits - passed down to us.
Now original sin is not physical. It’s not like a smudge
thumb pressed on a soul - like ashes on Ash Wednesday on our forehead.
It’s a possible crack in our attitude….
It’s a life that can be warped and deceptive at times.
In Hebrew there is a phrase called, “yetzer hara” [meaning:
evil lurking at our door]. We can notice
this in the Book of Genesis - Chapter
4 - verses 6 and 7. God asks Cain, “Why
are you angry and downcast? If you are well disposed, ought you not to lift your head? But if you are ill disposed, is not sin at
the door like a crouching beast
hungering for you, which you must master?”
That’s a powerful image of sin. Sin, temptations, lurk at
our door. They tug at our tent flaps. They want to come into our life.
So we pray, “lead us not into temptation”.
So we pray to Mary, full of grace, knowing we have fallen
out of grace, far from grace over and over
again.
So Mary is special - being chosen by God - to be God’s
Mother.
Now our church chewed upon - thought about - conceived in
various ways - what his means and meant - with all its implications.
It wasn’t till 1854 that the Church stated that Mary was
conceived immaculately. This became a dogmatic teaching. The Catholic Church
said Mary was conceived without the original sin - of Adam and Eve.
Not everyone conceived of this happening this way. For
example, St. Thomas Aquinas.
So the title of my homily is, Maculate Deception in
contrast to Mary’s Immaculate Conception.
MACULATE
And I’m using in the title of my homily a rare word,
“maculate”. We know the word
“Immaculate” - because of the words “Immaculate Conception”.
Macula is the Latin word for “stain” - or “spot” or
“blemish”.
The only regular way we might have heard the word is when
someone has the eye problem called “macula degeneration”. It’s the leading
cause of eye vision loss for over 10
million Americans.
So Mary was conceived without stain, blemish, or spot.
KAIROS AND
CHRONOS
God made this happen in the fullness of time. The Greek word in the New Testament for the
fullness of time - at the right time - is Kairos.
In Ephesians
1:10 we have a great text: “He has made
known to us his hidden purpose - such was his will and pleasure determined
beforehand in Christ - to be put into effect when the time [Kairos] was ripe:
namely, that the universe, all in heaven and earth, might be brought into a
unity in Christ.”
Mary, as William Wordsworth [1770-1850] would put it in
his poem, The Virgin, became “our
tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
THE REST OF US
The rest of us are maculate - stained - and for this
homily I’m adding the word, “deception” - to play on the word “conception”.
We are maculate - translation “messy” or “stained”.
We are deceivers - unfortunately - as well.
We hide from God.
Today’s gospel is Mary’s story.
Today’s first reading from Genesis is the story of the rest of us.
There is something about us - that we don’t do what God wants us to do.
We have the gift of freedom - and we don’t use that freedom well.
To be honest, to be transparent, to be naked, we eat
forbidden fruit.
God gives us all - so much - and we tend to mess it up.
That sinful inner tendency is sin in the singular -
original and unoriginal sin.
We can have so much - but we all cheat to get an edge on
the rest of us - by going for the grab - the forbidden fruit - whatever it
takes to make us more powerful than God and each other.
We lie.
Then we blame each other. Then we blame the snake. Then
we hide.
We are into maculate deceptions.
Maculate means stained.
Deception: we spend our lives deceiving ourselves.
I remember a talk that a Sister Maureen McCann gave us
years and years ago.
She talked about the 3 steps in how things really work:
1)
Life is illusion;
2)
Life is a disillusionment;
3)
and it’s
then we have to make a decision.
Take health. Take death. Take aging.
We deceive ourselves - if we stay in the illusion that we
won’t die.
Life is filled with illusions: we age. We sag. We will
get our bloated or pot bellies.
Bread has a shelf life; so too each person.
Yet people complain that their Aunt Sally died.
Cars get dents, scratches, rust.
Dresses rip. Colors fade. Styles change.
Teeth hurt from time to time.
So too our bones.
Towers lean. Towers fall. Earth quakes.
Urinary tracks get infected.
Dollar bills get dirty.
Life is about scratches and scars, hemorrhoids and heart
problems.
It’s an illusion if we think we are going to last
forever.
To accept maculate deceptions - is a crafty creed.
Then when our deceptions bite us you know where, it’s
time for us to make some serious decisions.
At some point, we have to admit that we lie to
ourselves….We need to learn to admit we hide from ourselves….
Smart steps.
The second step after illusions is the acceptance of the delusion.
Then comes the third step: decision.
I remember reading - years and years ago - a statement by
some poet - perhaps Ted Hughes: “Oh the lies
I have told my energies.”
That resonated with me. Being a procrastinator, I got
that. I have bottomed out a lot - getting lazy a lot of times.
As priest I’m listening to people all the time - some of whom confess -
laziness - self-deception. Me too.
In the recent elections Hilary was slammed for lying. In
the recent elections Donald was challenged for his lies. A new word arose:
post-truth.
Let’s be honest, we lie inwardly lots of times.
So it’s an important step to face our illusions and our
disillusions and then to decide to move into truth.
And as Jesus put it, “The truth will set us free.”
THE WIZZARD OF
OZ
It’s important for everyone to hear the wisdom of the
movie, The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy had
to discover good and evil. Dorothy had to discover that much of life is walking
in a dream. Dorothy had to discover the Wizard is nothing more than an old man
behind a curtain - leading us on.
Life is moving ahead. The clock keeps ticking.
Life is following the yellow brick road - overcoming our
obstacles - gaining heart, brains, wisdom, courage - and then getting back home
so as to start all over.
Life is loaded with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
We like the Good - but we don’t like the bad and the
ugly.
CONCLUSION
So that’s a few of my thoughts on this feast of the
Immaculate Conception.
It would be worth our while to step into any Catholic
Church and go the a statue or picture of Mary and contrast her life with our
life.
Moreover, isn’t that what people do instinctively when it
comes to Mary?
We Catholics go to her shrine and admit, “Hail Mary, full of grace. the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Breathe.
Then say Part 2 of that basic prayer: “Holy Mary, Mother
of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
The title of my homily is, Maculate Deceptions.
We are stained deceivers and we need someone above us and
better than us - to make it to the end of our yellow brick road.
That’s basically why Mary was needed to help us get to
our eternal home.
Yes God, there is a God.
