Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Cycle C. Today’s readings: Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood.The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), by Margaret Atwood, is a dystopian feminist novel that envisions a grim future in which the United States has been overthrown by a totalitarian theocracy called the Republic of Gilead. Rooted in a distorted interpretation of Christian fundamentalism, this regime subjugates women and enforces rigid societal roles. Amid a global fertility crisis, fertile women (the eponymous ‘handmaids’) are forced to bear children for the elite ruling class.
This novel has experienced a resurgence in recent years, thanks to a TV adaptation of the same name. The handmaids’ iconic costume (long red dress, white bonnet) often features in protests, particularly against what some perceive as increasing restrictions on abortion. The implication is clear: any limitation of so-called reproductive rights is tantamount to subjugation.
Yet today’s Gospel presents us with a young woman called Mary declaring herself “the handmaid of the Lord”. She gladly adopts this title with no indication that she feels subjugated in any way. Quite the contrary, in fact; a few verses later in the same chapter of Luke’s Gospel, she launches into a triumphal hymn of liberation, joyfully praising the Lord, gratefully proclaiming the great things he has done for her. Notably, these “great things” involve the calling to bear God’s son, thereby participating in his salvific mission.
This lofty mission required another of God’s ‘great things’, a divine intervention at the very beginning of Mary’s life. In 1854, Blessed Pope Pius IX, drawing on several centuries of Catholic belief, formally declared that: “the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin”.
The Immaculate Conception reminds us that serving God is not subjugation. Rather, it is a rediscovery of our most authentic selves, untainted by selfishness and pride
By preserving Mary from original sin – defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the state of deprivation of human nature’s original holiness and justice – God places Our Lady in a state of spiritual purity and freedom, akin to the way in which the Book of Genesis depicts Adam and Eve before the fall. Only in this way can Mary accept the divine mission entrusted to her in a way that is authentically free, without ever – not even for the faintest instant – having been beholden to evil (or to the Evil One).
Let it be clear; the Church is not claiming that Mary did not need a saviour. Rather, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception asserts that the same merits of Jesus Christ which save us by atoning for our sins, also saved Mary – retroactively, as it were – by preserving her from original sin. By way of analogy, a child can be pulled out of a river into which he has fallen, while another child may be prevented from falling into that river. Both are saved but in different ways.
Yet if today’s solemnity celebrates God’s initiative in preparing Mary and endowing her with the spiritual gifts necessary for her vocation and mission, it also celebrates Mary’s faithful cooperation with God’s grace and her total openness to his plan. And the late Fr Paul Mankowski, SJ, wrote: “She, who was full of grace, said, ‘Your will be done, not mine’. When she praised God because he had looked on her in her lowliness, she was not feigning humility. She was uniquely aware that it was God’s grace, and not her own merit, in virtue of which she had been set apart.”
The Immaculate Conception reminds us that serving God is not subjugation. Rather, it is a rediscovery of our most authentic selves, untainted by selfishness and pride.
bgatt@maltachurchtribunals.org