Mary Gives a No to Give Her Yes
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Mary ponders two times in Luke’s Gospel, but the meaning of the original Greek is different in each case. The second time that Mary ponders comes at the birth of Christ. The shepherds appear to deliver a message given to them by angels, and we are told that Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The meaning of the word at the birth of Christ is to bring things together in one’s mind. I think we can say that the reality of the Incarnation causes Mary to wonder. Mary is struck with awe. She tries to make sense of the divine realities that surround her.
Mary also ponders when the angel Gabriel appears to her to announce the coming of Christ. Mary is troubled by what Gabriel says to her, and so she pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Here is our Gospel for today. And the meaning of the word at this moment in Mary’s life is very different: there is confusion in Mary’s mind; she goes back-and-forth in her mind evaluating the greeting of the angel, but every act of deliberation reinforces her confusion.
How does Mary resolve the confusion? The standard answer is that Mary makes a choice. Mary gives her Yes to God. The decision that Mary makes, to trust God, to act on faith, resolves the confusion. Mary might not yet understand the life that God places before her in this moment—there she will be, pondering the divine realities that surround her after the birth of the Christ-child—but because of her choice, Mary now lives free from confusion. Mary is resolved to do the will of God in her life.
I don’t think I like the standard answer. Here is my problem with it: there is a difference between making a choice, on the one hand, and accepting an incontrovertible truth about reality, on the other. To make a choice requires two viable options placed before us. Two roads diverge in a wood, each possessing its own advantages, and we make a choice to travel the one more or less traveled. That is what it means to make a choice. But Mary does not make a choice. There are not two viable options placed before her: do God’s will, on the one hand, or don’t, on the other. Mary is not at a crossroads requiring a decision but rather confronts a reality that only a fool—which is to say, only a sinful human being—would consider optional. Her Yes is not the consequence of a choice, but rather of the rejection of human pride. Who are we, as created and fragile creatures, to claim that to receive the will of God in our lives is a matter of choice? Mary’s Yes is but the logical consequence of her No: no to the willful arrogance that continually, daily, threatens to separate us from God with our false, manufactured, imagined ideas about how there are choices to make about the deepest truths of reality.
Today we celebrate the fact that Mary is conceived without sin. Mary is born with a notable advantage in life. The brokenness that defines our human lives does not define her human life in quite the same way. That Mary finds the grace within herself to reject the possibility of rejecting God ought not to surprise us—that grace comes from God. We receive a similar grace from God. We are not conceived without sin, but the separation from God that is original sin for us is destroyed through the waters of baptism. We can’t live Mary’s life, and we aren’t called to live Mary’s life. We are called to live the life that Christ gives us, and, like Mary, Christ gives us the grace we need to live that life. And, like Mary, we will give our Yes to God just as soon as we start to give our No to our fanciful, wild imaginings about the choices we get to make in life.
Homily given December 8th, 2022 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary