MACULATE  DECEPTION

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.