First, think of the Old Testament and the Ark of the Covenant. What was the Ark? It was a big golden box that the Israelites carried through the desert; something that only the pure and ritually clean could touch. It was their most prized possession. It was the most beautifully and richly adorned item they had, and it had to be so, not because of itself, but because it was a vessel, a vehicle, for the greatness of what was inside - the Covenant, the promises made between God and man.

What was the Covenant? It was the Ten Commandments, along with some manna and Aaron’s rod. The Covenant manifested to the Israelites the tangible evidence by which they knew that God was truly with them, and the hope of the Promised Land.  And we see what happens to Israel when they lose the Ark, and when they break the Covenant made between them and God. The Book of Hebrews tells us that the New Testament fulfills the Old in a more glorious way because the Old is “but a shadow of the good things to come” (Hb 10).

Now, who is Jesus? He is the New Covenant. We could go through all the ways that the Old Covenant bears the Messianic promises of a priest, prophet, and king, and how Jesus fulfills all of them, and thus is the fulfillment of the Israelites’ hope, promise, blessing, prophecy, kingdom, etc., but maybe for another e-Letter. So, in what way did Jesus come to earth? Through which vehicle did he choose to come to earth from heaven? In what vessel did the New Covenant, the new Adam, choose to dwell? He came as a man; He came through Mary, the New Ark, the new Eve. It is rather incomprehensible to think that God, the creator of the universe, could take on lowly human form and choose to come as a man by being conceived in and born from a woman. Well, we believe this mystery, and Saint Paul tells us mystery is given to us that we might spend our whole lives trying to understand it more. So if the incomprehensible is true, then should not that woman chosen to be the Mother of God be the most splendid, glorious, beautiful, and richly adorned of all other women - than all other creation? If the old Ark was a product of the richest materials of the People of God, then should not the new Ark be the creation of the beauty of the Creator himself? Should she not be made as worthy as possible to be the mother of that same Creator? Why are cathedrals and chalices so beautiful and splendid? Why should we spend so much money on these, when that money could be used to end worldwide poverty and hunger? Not for themselves or their producers are they built, but for what they contain and what they point to…God. So too is it with the Immaculata. She is the finishing crown of all creation because no other creature was found worthy to bear its Creator!

When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the Annunciation, he said, “Hail, full of grace” (Lk 1). Two things are key here. Firstly, Gabriel did not just come down and casually say “Hey Mary!” but communicated to her a unique dignity. He called her “full of grace” giving her a title, which may be why Luke writes that Mary “was greatly troubled at the saying and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be.” Secondly, in the Greek that St. Luke uses, the phrase literally translates, “she who has been graced” not as a simple action, but as something that has been completed in the past, thus resulting in the present state of Mary’s being. The Greek tells us that Mary’s gracefulness was something already given to her, and is now being confirmed in her hearing it. The rest of us sin because we lack grace, but Gabriel tells Mary that she is “full of grace.” If she is full of grace, then there is no room in her for anything but grace, so she does not lack any grace. So, if we sin because of a lack of grace, how can Mary, who lacks no grace, commit any sin? I imagine, since I don’t know for myself, that when an angel speaks, he’s speaking very precisely, especially since it’s not his own word that he announces, but the message of Another.

Historically, devotion to the Immaculate Conception is prime among Franciscans, and was a great source of ridicule for them. In the late thirteenth century, Bl. John Duns Scotus, a Scottish friar, was harshly criticized and thought foolish by other Church theologians for his defense of the Immaculate Conception, something that even St. Thomas Aquinas did not fully accept. So widespread was the denunciation of Scotus’ defense, that even today we know of him from the word “dunce” that comes from his name and the cone-shaped “dunce hat” that is really his Franciscan hood! But it was from Scotus that the Council of Trent, though not defining the dogma, admitted that there cannot be found a theological objection to it. After centuries of debate, Pope Pius IX, on December 8, 1854, defined as universal doctrine the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, saying that “this dogma is revealed by God and therefore is to be firmly and unremittingly believed by all the faithful.” Four years later, Our Lady appeared at Lourdes to St. Bernadette, and as if to confirm the Church’s definition, told St. Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe is truthfully not so much a saint because of his heroic death at Auschwitz, but through his heroic devotion to the “Immaculata.” Recalling Scotus’ own heroism, he called the Immaculate Conception the “crowning achievement of the entire Franciscan Order.”

On the eve of the Immaculate Conception, the brothers and sisters eat a very simple dinner while kneeling at the table. The reason being: four hundred years ago, a delegation of church officials came to the friary of the early Capuchin reform to suppress them, because they were deceived into thinking that those founding friars were heretics and agents of the devil. When they stormed into the friary, they found the friars kneeling at the table and fasting. It was the eve of the Immaculate Conception. Today, we honor the Immaculata, and we ask her to protect our own little reform too.

May Jesus and Mary reign in our hearts. Ave Maria!

Brother Aloysius Marie Mazzone, CFR

St. Lawrence Friary

Bronx, NY