Help Us, Mother Mary; Help Us!

As a child, at Block Rosary Crusade meetings, we used to sing:

Help us, Mother Mary, help us (2ce)

For we need your help-o, mother!

We need your help-o-oh, mother

Mother, mother, Mary, help us!

And as we sang, we would dance soulfully. We did need her help, the help of the mother of Jesus. We need the same help even now. We can never get too old or too cool to need her help.

Today is the Immaculate Conception, a day set aside by Mother Church to celebrate the pure birth of the one who gave Jesus his body and blood. This is a huge deal for us Catholics. Nine months from today, September 8, we will celebrate the birthday of Mary. [The Immaculate Conception is normally celebrated on the 8th of December, but because yesterday was a Sunday, it is being marked today, the 9th.] There is a legend about the Immaculate Conception. I learned it as a child. It goes thus:

A long time ago, there was a man named Joachim. He was a very devout and faithful man. Everyone knew him to be upright and ethical. But he was childless. He and his wife, Anne, had been married for years, but without offspring. Nevertheless, Joachim was a very wealthy man. And he often used to make large contributions to the poor, and to temple funds. At harvest time he would divide his produce into three portions. He would bring one portion to the temple; he would give another portion to the poor, and he would give the third portion to his wife for the upkeep of his own home. He was very generous. He counted material wealth as nothing. He rather fixed his sights on the goodness of heaven. One day, he came as usual to donate a third of his wealth to the temple. He was making his way to the inner sanctuary to donate his gift when a jealous Levite mocked him. The Levite said to Joachim: "Are you truly a righteous man as you would have others believe? If you are, why has God not blessed you with any offspring after years of marriage? You always come to this temple to show off your wealth under the pretext of charity. But God knows better what sort of person you really are!" Joachim was very hurt to hear the Levite speak so. He was so hurt that he left his offering there and ran away, into the desert. There in the desert, he wept bitterly to the Lord. He asked God to remove his shame; he told God to bless him with a child, in order to prove to everyone that he was a righteous man deserving of God's blessings. He refused to eat or drink for the number of days he spent in the desert, weeping and praying.

Meanwhile, Anne was in the house. She too was praying and weeping. She was concerned for her husband. She prayed to God to protect him and bring him back home to her safe and sound. God heard the prayers of Joachim and Anne. He saw their tears as well, and so he sent Angel Gabriel to comfort them and bring them relief from their suffering. Promptly, Angel Gabriel went to the desert where Joachim was and inspired him to begin to walk toward the temple. Then Gabriel went to Anne where she was at home and similarly inspired her to begin to walk to the temple. And so Anne and Joachim both began to walk toward the temple, inspired by God's angel. Now, at the exact second that Anne reached the gate of the outer court of the temple, Joachim reached the same spot too; and immediately a light from heaven shone down and encircled both of them, and in that very instant Anne conceived and became pregnant. Joachim took Anne back home and, nine months later, she gave birth to the baby girl, Mary. Thus it was, by this legend, that Mary was preserved from conception in original sin of the sort that everyone else experiences.

Today's readings are from: Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12, and Luke 1:26-38. The first reading, from Genesis, talks about how it is that all of us, except for Mary, are born with original sin. This is what happened. God created everything to be good. And in the center of it all he created a garden. He put the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, in the garden. He asked them to eat everything, except the fruit of the tree of good and evil. But the devil in the form of a snake deceived Eve into eating it, and Eve in turn got Adam to eat it too. And God was very angry. He cursed the snake, Eve, and Adam. And he made all the offspring of Eve (all humans) culpable of original sin through that sad curse, the curse of perpetual enmity with fate. Mother Church gives us this reading on a day like this to show how it is that Mary is special. Unlike us, she was not born with the culpability of original sin. The second reading from Ephesians shows how possible it is that God could indeed have singled Mary out to be born free from sin. This God is the one that is able to choose people from before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish; predestining them to act according to a set purpose; to exist for the praise of his glory, and to be blessed with every esoteric, spiritual blessing. And in the Gospel reading, we see how the Angel Gabriel was sent to Mary to announce the coming of Jesus through her, this coming being the reason for her immaculate conception in the first place. In other words, it is because God wanted her to be his son's mother that he preserved Mary from being born with original sin. God wanted the flesh and blood that his son would receive from her to be free from stain.

Now that we've briefly explored the theological foundation of the Immaculate Conception, let us look at it from the point of view of alternate spirituality. Recall that we have said in a previous post in the words of Iyanla Vanzant, eminent spiritual writer, that a soul "chooses" its body even before birth. In other words, because each soul has a lesson to learn, it unconsciously selects a body through which it will learn what it has to learn. The soul of Jesus was to learn humility through suffering and, through sacrifice, destroy in himself and in the entire human race the consequences of negative emotions. (He could do this for the entire human race because his rational capacity is infinite, being as it were the rational capacity of God himself.) To do this, he chose the body of a humble girl, who was innocent and well-groomed. But, in order that the sacrifice should be efficacious in removing sin, he had to be free from sin from the get-go, lest his death be punishment rather than sacrifice. [The logic here is that there is punishment for sin, which is death, according to Romans 6:23a, which states, "The wages of sin is death." Jesus had no sin at all. But he still died. So, his death is not punishment for his sin - since there is no sin in him - but sacrifice to destroy the "wages" of our own sins, every last one of us.] This was why the global soul, Jesus, chose Mary's body; chose the material circumstances it did.

Phew! Lots of theological and spiritual gymnastics going on here. Anyway. The Immaculate Conception is real, folks, and it makes plenty of sense. And so, today, let us rejoice, and let us ask Mary for her help. "Beata mater, intacta virgo, regina mundi, ora pro nobis." [Use Google Translate, and please don't hate me for knowing a little Latin.] Let us now sing:

Help us, Mother Mary, help us (2ce)

For we need your help-o, mother!

We need your help-o-oh, mother

Mother, mother, Mary, help us!