PURE GRATUITY

Mary
was made
of water alone.

A. Merini

What does it mean to say that Mary was the Immaculate Conception? The angel reveals it to us, greeting her: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28). Mary is full of grace, that is, in her shines the loving approval of the Father, who calls her through the work of the Spirit – to be mother of his Only Begotten Son. Being the Immaculate one meant for Mary: to live and bear witness to this prevenient and gratuitous grace, enabling her to give herself, forever; to live and bear witness to that new generation that in Christ, the new Adam, inaugurated the Kingdom of God. When we look at the Immaculate one, we are immediately attracted by her innocence; but this innocence is not to be understood only as the absence of guilt (that would be her negative face) but as the pure transparency of the uncreated light, which, passing through her heart and her body, was thus refracted on our humanity. And yet—and here lies the beauty and I would say also the greatness of Mary: “No one – wrote Bernanos – has lived, suffered, died as simply and in such profound ignorance of her own dignity, of a dignity that places her above the angels” as Mary of Nazareth. “She – continues the writer – was without sin… A source so pure, so clear and pure that she could not even see her own image reflected in it, made only for the glory of the Father. The Virgin was Innocence”.
Like her, we too are loved by God; loved, starting from what we are and not from what we should be; loved in our weakness, in our constant falls, and even in sin. Loved when we fight to overcome ourselves, when we give our timid and calculated responses to His love. And precisely because we are loved (and we will never understand this divine gratuitousness) we are made participants in a plan of salvation. Writing to the Ephesians, Paul reminds us that God chose us “before the creation of the world, / to be holy and immaculate before him in love” (Eph 1:4). Even before the world existed, we were in the heart of God and we were as if waiting to be called to dwell in Him, holy and immaculate. St Paul VI wrote: “In her is reflected the primordial beauty with which God had conceived humanity; in her is reborn the conversation of the angels with innocent man; in her, the profound silence of the perfect soul open to the infinite becomes love, becomes word, becomes life, becomes flesh, becomes Christ; in her every piety, every kindness, every humanity, every poem is a living woman”.
In Mary we also see our personal mystery reflected. We are not only men and women wrapped in guilt, crushed by wickedness, tainted by corruption, wicked and bad in an irreversible and irremediable way. With Mary we have passed from death to life, from guilt to grace by the power of Christ’s Easter. Of course, we still feel the seductive allure of evil, but it is even more true that a power of life works in us, so much so that we can say with the apostle Paul: «In Christ we are a new creature» (2 Cor 5:17).

Woman without shadow, Immaculate,
Thoughtful Light of the Annunciation.
Fruit of your meditation,
as a son, I reflect you,
O Mater Intemerata.

G. Costantini

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey