The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. The thing I like the thought I'd like to leave with you this morning is this. We hail our blessed mother as full of grace. That's another way of saying, but much more correctly, that she was absolutely sinless.
And death is a consequence of sin. And therefore, if the church's doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is correct, and it's an article of faith, then it follows that Mary would not be subject to death in the ordinary sense of the word. And when this feast was declared, the feast of the assumption in 1950 by Pius the twelfth, it didn't cause much of a stir. And many Protestant theologians said this is this makes sense. If the Immaculate Conception is an article of faith, certainly, then you have to conclude that Mary was not subject to the consequences of sin.
Now what I want to leave with you this morning very briefly, and you know I'm always brief, is this, the difference between full of grace and sinlessness. Those pews are sinless. There's no sin in those pews. There's no sin in that chair. There's no sin in that marble.
There's no sin in the wood. So mere sinlessness isn't very much, is it? And why? Because it's a negative. And yet people try to live their lives on negations.
I was brought up in a community of very sincere and law abiding Methodists, And the creed was don't smoke, don't drink, don't gamble, what about and don't dance. You say, what's left in life? But, anyway, notice all those don'ts. They're negatives. Our blessed mother is the mother of god, and we hail her as full of grace.
There's something. You can't say that about those pews or about this marble or about that wood or about this pulpit or about this book. Oh, no. They're sinless. They never committed any sin.
They can't commit any sin. So that's not saying an awful lot, is it? But when you say full of grace, oh, there you have something else. There you have something else. And this is the thought I wanna leave with you.
You know that scene where our blessed mother and her and the following of our lord were outside? And he said the woman cried out, blessed is she who bore you and the breasts that suckled you. What did our lord say? What was his answer? Rather, rather, not equal, but rather, blessed are they who hear the word of god and keep it.
Not just here. Plenty of people hear. Plenty of people listen. People know what Christ says. They know what he wants in the living voice of his church.
What do they do about it? What do they do about it? Many of them get very busy to rationalize it away, away. And we have our cafeteria Catholics. And so this feast, the church sprinkles feasts to of Our Lady throughout the year.
And she does this to call our very special attention to Mary. Remember, Mary is one of us. She's human, completely human. Completely human. She's not divine.
And we can look up to her and say, there, you are one of us, in a sense in which you can't say Jesus Christ is. Because while he had absolutely and completely a human nature, he certainly was in the one person, God. And we can only become that by being his brothers, but not him. But with our blessed lady, there we have one of us, a woman who knew knew sorrow, a a woman who knew great stress, a great a woman who knew what confusion was, a woman who summed up the whole life, thy will be done. I like to think you know, there's a the the meeting of our blessed mother with Elizabeth is commemorated in a beautiful, beautiful church in a little, little town about two miles out of Jerusalem called Ayn Karim, which is on the West Bank.
Keep keep that in mind. The Palestinians have all been evacuated, and what was once a beautiful garden like countryside, when I saw it was pretty desolate. Anyway, there's a gorgeous church, and they have the Magnificat in 41 plaques around the entrance to the church in 41 different languages, the magnificat. Now here's a little point. Notice in Latin, it begins magnificat, and so does the Greek.
It doesn't begin with I, but the English translation is I or my being or I, my soul or whatever. Notice the force of that verb. God's first. God's first. And if Mary is important, it's because of her son.
Anything that's wonderful and superior and excellent and gracious about the blessed mother, it's because she was the mother of God. The mother of God. I repeat, the mother of God. Because Jesus Christ is one person, two natures, and I don't have to see this latest movie to know that. And so today, these peace have meaning only if you bring them into your daily lives.
It's not enough to hear. It's you've got to act. It's not enough to be sinless. You have to have grace. You have to pursue holiness.
You have to follow Jesus Christ, and that is never negative. Never. You pick up your cross and you follow him. Every single thing about it is positive. And as we say, Mary, hail Mary, full of grace, all we can do is to pray, and we may we know we have a wonderful, wonderful champion.
We know what she can do for us, and we'll say, Mary, help me. Help me to be like you in following your son. She's doing at the cross. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.