A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. If my voice sounds to you as it sounds to me, it's pretty awful. It's just a matter of some of the penance you will do before eternity. I'll do it with you. Anyway, this is the scene of the annunciation according to Saint Luke.
The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. Upon arriving, the angel said to Mary, rejoice, oh highly favored daughter. The lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.
At these words, Mary was deeply troubled and wondered what they might mean. The angel went on to say, do not fear, Mary. You have found favor with god. You shall conceive and bear a son and give him the name Jesus. Great will be his dignity and he will be called son of the most high.
The lord god will give him the throne of David, his father. He will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and his reign will be without end. Then Mary said to the angel, how can all this happen since I do not know man? The angel answered, the holy spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you. Hence, the holy offspring to be born will be called son of god.
Know that Elizabeth, your kinswoman, has conceived a son in her old age. She, Elizabeth, who was thought to be sterile, is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God. And with that, Mary said, I am the maid servant of the lord. Let it be done to me as you say. And with that, the angel left her.
And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Before Pius the ninth in 1854, officially, formally, categorically, ex cathedra, and all of that, declared the immaculate conception, that is that the present mother, from the very first moment of her conception, was sinless. Before that was so pronounced, Wordsworth, the English poet, had stated that in regard to Mary, our human nature's solitary boast because of her sinlessness. Our human nature's solitary boast.
Of course, that's not true because Jesus Christ was truly human. He had a complete human nature. So he too was absolutely sinless so that in a sense, Mary is not our nature's solitary boast. But in another sense, it's very true. Because as Jesus Christ, her son was son of god, Mary is truly a son of our our daughter of our own human nature.
And so in that atmosphere, in that frame of reference, she is indeed our nature's solitary boast. Now you cannot this is the one thought thought I wanna leave with you. You cannot talk about the Immaculate Conception without talking about sin, s I n, sin. It's it's less than a four letter word. It has been removed from the English vocabulary.
We may make mistakes. We may act against society. Oh, there are all kinds of euphemisms. We may be sexually active, meaning adultery and fornication. There are all kinds of euphemisms to try to avoid the word sin.
As soon as you use that three letter word sin, you are bringing in a whole universe of discourse. You're bringing in, first of all, god. God. Because the essence of sin, it has something to do with you and god, not merely with yourself or with your neighbor. Today, you think that the only crime was some kind of antisocial conduct.
Blasphemy is the greatest sin. So that's the first thing. You the word sin implies god. And secondly, it implies some kind of a break which you are responsible for. You are the agent.
You have to say, And that's what we don't like. The idea that I can do wrong intentionally is abhorrent to the great Russo idea of perfect human nature. It's that we lack education, that's a thing. Education, more money in the budget, that will solve our problems. All this talk that we have today about premarital sex, all this talk we have about AIDS, we are talking all around it.
Even when chastity is mentioned as it barely is, you mustn't think of its opposite as sin. Oh, no. It's it's ignorance. It's it's lack of education. It's it's lack that the the teenagers don't have the right home, the right parents, the right godparents, or they didn't eat the right breakfast cereal.
It's everything under the sun except that they are responsible for their conduct or can be. Who knows in a given instance? And that's something we don't have to judge. We do not want to admit in our society USA 1987 that we can sin, that we do sin, and that we are sinners. We don't want to admit it.
And yet, I just had a baptism Saturday week ago. You take this little baby, and that baby is treated as a sinner. Now here is where we must keep our feet firmly on god's truth. Because as truly as we sin, as truly as we need a redeemer, as truly as we need salvation, we need a redeemer. And Mary, the blessed mother of our lord, never comes to us without Jesus in her arms.
Never. There's nothing you can say about the blessed mother does that which does not involve her with the idea of her being the mother of god. Notice I said the mother of god. Not the mother of Jesus' human nature, but the mother of Jesus Christ who was one person, one god. And so today, we celebrate the patronal feast of The United States Of The Immaculate Conception, and incidentally, as remember, nineteen forty one, twenty four hundred men died that morning, that Sunday morning.
Let us not forget that. It's written boldly in our history. But as we assemble this morning, feels almost like midnight mass. Let us realize that sin is a possibility, that we are sinners. You may think your windshield is very clear, but just let some good bright sunlight get on that windshield and you'll see it smear.
See, it's all relative. This business is relative. And so we do before god, before that tremendous light, say, lord, I am a sinner. Forgive me. But you see, with that admission, I am claiming Christ as my own, as my savior.
And if I have a savior in Jesus Christ, I have a mother in his in Mary. And today, we celebrate her absolute sinlessness. Our tainted nature's solitary boast. And that was Wordsworth, who was not a papist. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.
Amen.