On this 9th day of the month of December and of this Advent reflection journey, let us see what we are preparing for during Advent in spirit and in anamnesis in a great picture – from before the beginning of time and towards the end of time.
Christ,
the only begotten Son of God the Father shall come to us through the woman, the
virgin (and this is Mary the Immaculate Conception) -
Genesis 3:1-24; Isaiah 7:1-14; cf. Revelation 12:1-18
The
birth of Mary, the Theotokos
- Protoevangelium of James 2-5
The
birth of Christ in the human flesh of Jesus, the Word incarnate through
Mary - John 1:1-14; Luke 1:26-38
The
Resurrection of Christ in the same human flesh of Jesus
(otherwise, no wound marks in his body and he would not eat fish )- John
20:24-29; Luke 24:36-49
We,
too, will enjoy the incorruptible flesh as Christ in Jesus does, thanks to his
Resurrection - 1 Corinthians 15:1-58
Because
Christ has the human flesh of Jesus, we have the Sacrament of the Holy
Eucharist, until the Parousia
- John 6:22-71; Matthew 26:17–30//Mark14:12–26//Luke
22:7–39
Yesterday, we honored and celebrated the life of
Mary as the Immaculate Conception and how it is related to our Advent
preparation for the first coming of Christ as the Word incarnate – Christ in
the human flesh of Jesus.
So far, we have reflected Christ, the begotten Son
of God the Father, has been in existence, along with the Holy Spirit, namely,
God in the whole Trinity, pre-existed eve before the Creation, through which
the universe and everything in the it have been created. Even before what
scientists call the Big Bang to bring force almost everything in the periodic
table of the elements, starting with hydrogen and helium for starts, from their
deaths, many other elements were formed out of hydrogen and helium and
eventually our biological life with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and so forth for
DNA and more. Thus, Christ has been existing for eons and eons long.
And it was until Adam and Eve sinned against God the
Father, who created everything, including Adam as the first human out of the dust
from the earth and Eve as the wife for him. In the beautiful Garden of Eden
(“Eden” in Hebrew means “paradise”), represented by Adam and Eve, the humans
enjoyed not only everything in Eden but the harmonious friendship with God.
Then, the cunning Satan in the form of snake, who were not happy to see Adam
and Eve doing well with God, brought a wedging trouble by tempting Eve to sin
against God by lying to her about the forbidden fruit (which is not an apple,
though). Isn’t it so tempting if someone said to you, “Hey, did you know if you
eat this, you will be like God, who knows everything because He is wise?”…”Hey,
did you know if you take a bite of this, you will ace all your tests and go to
an elite college with full scholarship, guaranteed?!” What Satan in snake said
to Eve was just like that. Though she remembered what God had said about the
forbidden fruit and a consequent of eating it would be death, Satan assured
“It’s OK”, though it was “Not OK” at all. So, Eve committed irreversible sinful
act and further more tempted her husband, Adam, to do likewise. It is like
passing on the virus that infected her to her husband! And he, too, ate the
forbidden fruit, just as his wife, Eve, did and asked him to. Adam listened to
his corrupt wife but not to God! This is how everything got “screwed up”! And,
it has taken God to do a lot of “damage control” and “repairing” works, for
which Christ the Son and Mary the Immaculate Conception needed to involve.
The sin Even committed first and then Adam did in
the Garden of Eden by eating the forbidden fruit is called “Original Sin” and
its effects have been passed on to every human, in our flesh (bodily stuff),
except for Mary, as she started her life in the womb of her mother, Anna, as
the Immaculate Conception, as God the Father so arranged, for the sake of His
only begotten Son, Christ, to come to us and to live with us to save us and
eventually to destroy Satan, the root of all evil, including sins, as He wanted the Son, Christ, to come to us
with the human flesh of Jesus through Mary’s womb, though she is virgin, the
Blessed Virgin, in fact.
As Blessed Pope Pius IX said in his “Inefffable Deus”, preserving Mary from
any inheriting impacts of the Original Sin through the flesh from the beginning
of her life with conception in her mother’s womb, when the soul entered in the
fertilized egg to become the zygote and to form the body of Mary was to make
sure that His only begotten Son comes to us with the perfectly unblemished
(spotless, immaculate) human bod of Jesus, who is also the Son of Mary and the
step Son of Joseph. To serve God the
Father, as the Theotokos (mother of
God, bearer of God in the body), though she did not know what it would unfold
and entail, she accepted this surprise role in saying, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according
to your Word” (Luke 1:38). So, if no Immaculate Conception of Mary, as
arranged by God the Father, to keep her as full of grace (therefore, no space
for vice to sneak in and corrupt, though Satan sure wants to corrupt her, as
well) , no Christ in the human body of Jesus born of her. Then, we might not
have Advent and Christmas as we know. If no Immaculate Conception, since it
could mean no Christ in the form of the flesh, there would be no Eucharist,
either, for eternal life. Imagine that!
Thanks to God the Father making Mary the Immaculate
Conception at the beginning of her life to be His “handmaid” as the Theotokos (mother of God), the Word, the
God, became the human flesh (incarnated in the human flesh) of the son, named
“Jesus”, which means “God saves” in Hebrew, to save us from the bonds of Satan,
called sins, and eventually to destroy the source of all evil, Satan. So,
Christ in Jesus has given his Word, in his Good News as the “manual” to live a
life fitting for salvation and fighting all evil. He has also given the food
and drink, to sustain and grow in faith, his very body and blood, as the
Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
Furthermore, he has arranged with the Father to send us the Holy Spirit
to always empower us in our growth in faith – to become more like Mary and
Jesus by overcoming sins – and to fight courageously against all evil from
Satan.
So, we are in good shape, thanks to God the Father
in heaven, who sends His only begotten Son, and thanks to Christ , who obeys
his Father’s will to be sent to us, and thanks to Mary faithfully accepting and
executing her role in salvation as the
Theotokos (mother of God), bearing Christ in the human flesh in her womb,
by the power of the Holy Spirit and raising Christ in Jesus to be wise and
strong with Joseph, her husband.
And, God the Father had all of this in mind even
before the beginning of history, according to Blessed Pope Pius IX in “Ineffable Deus” because He loved us so
much, in spite of our unfaithfulness and sins (John 3:16), first, planning to
elect Mary as the Immaculate Conception, to assure the purity of the human
flesh and to be able to recover it, even Satan can corrupt it to making us
moral. So, in the human flesh, but the unblemished flesh, of Jesus, Christ has
enabled us to resurrect to have the incorruptible new flesh (body) to be suited
to live in the Kingdom of God, in the fullness of God’s time, as Paul explains.
For this reason, Christ died and resurrected in the human body, which grew out
of Mary’s Immaculate flesh.
Now we know how important Mary is to fully
appreciate God the Father for his love and His only begotten Son to be sent to
us as Christ in the human body of Jesus for our salvation and beyond.
That is why Mary is honored as the Immaculate Heart
and as the Queen of the Universe, while we honor her Son, Christ as the Sacred
Heart and the King of the Universe (king and queen are not always necessarily
husband and wife, as it can be son and his mother in royal customs of many cultures).
To understand the two prophecies of the coming of
Christ through the woman and the virgin (young woman of childbearing age) that
we have reflected so far, in Genesis 3:15 and in Isaiah 7:14 , not only we
sense that the special woman to give human birth to Christ is Mary – because
God the Father already planned to make Mary the Immaculate Conception, eons of
years before Mary was born.
See, in reflecting on Advent, our faithful and diligent
preparation with vigilant hope is such a great love story that God has been
making for us, spanning since before the
beginning of history and the Creation.
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