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Homily for the Feast of the Imacculate Conception, 08 December 2022, Lk 1:26-38
I like today’s readings but I have to confess that I am not contented with them. I honestly do not find them appropriate enough for this important feast day of the Immaculate Conception. They are in fact the primary reason why most Catholics have tended to misunderstand this famous doctrine.
This is understandable though, because we are dealing with a relatively young doctrine—just about 168 years now since the time it was declared by Pope Pius IX in 1854. He is the Pope known in Spanish as “Papa Pio Nono.” In Pampanga, “PioNono” has become the name of a delicious pastry, a kind of flat chiffon cake rolled with caramel filling. We have therefore known him more as a pastry than as the Pope who declared the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Since the Gospel chosen for the feast is the story of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary (Lk 1:26-38), many Catholics think this feast is about the Immaculate Conception of Jesus in Mary’s womb. Actually, despite its being well-attested in Scriptures, the Catholic Church did not even seem to find the need to articulate it as a doctrine. The doctrine of the “Virgin Birth” seems enough. But about today’s feast, it is important to emphasize that what we celebrate is the “Immaculate Conception of Mary” in the womb of her mother, St. Anne!
Perhaps if I had been given the privilege of choosing the readings for today’s feast, I would have chosen, not the story of the Annuciation in St. Luke’s Gospel, (Lk 1:26-38), but rather the Magnificat or the well-known Canticle of Mary, which is also in the same Infancy Narrative of Luke (Lk 1:46-56), just a few verses after the Annunciation. The problem, however, is, because of our lack of imagination, we do not know anymore how to properly appreciate these stories which Luke used as an introduction to his Gospel.
We have tended to take them LITERALLY rather than LITERARILY. As a consequence, we have also lost the sophistication of the message being communicated by St. Luke. We would rather take them as a blow-by-blow account of what exactly happened when Jesus was born rather than as theological statements told in a literary form called “Midrash” in Rabbinical Judaism, and for which St. Luke seemed to have developed a special fondness.
St. Luke is like a kind next-door neighbor who gives us grated coconut on learning that we are planning to cook “ginataang bilo-bilo” (glutinous rice balls in coconut milk). How would you react if I were the cook and I simply mixed the grated coconut straight into the boiling pot of “bilo-bilo”? Do you think it would come out right, even if all the ingredients are right? No, it will be a disaster. Imagine what it is like eating this traditional Filipino fruit stew with grated coconut mixed into it! Good heavens, you would probably choke while eating it!
The coconut had been grated precisely to make it easy for you to squeeze out its milk! Well, no doubts, in some instances, we also eat grated coconut with puto or kutsinta. But for a proper “ginataang bilo-bilo” you need coconut milk! We even make the most of the grated coconut by extracting two kinds of milk from it. On the one hand, we have the “kakang gata” (pure coconut milk), the milk from the first squeeze. On the other hand there is the “malabnaw na gata” (diluted coconut milk) from the second or even third squeeze of the same grated coconut now soaked in a little water.
The same thing goes with the Christmas stories of St. Luke. They were written to be mulled upon, reflected on, not to be simply swallowed as they are. Like grated coconut, they have to be squeezed properly and in stages, to be able to really get out the milk.
Therefore if I were to choose the first reading for today’s feast day, I would probably choose the story of the call of the prophet Jeremiah. It is in the very first chapter of the book, Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” This is the passage that I would have loved to pair with Mary’s Magnificat, which sounds very much like the prophetic call of Mary.
The Immaculate Conception is about Mary chosen by God for a prophetic mission like that of Jeremiah. Why? Because she is destined to deliver to the world the Prophet par excellence—the Son of God who would take flesh in her womb.
The characters in Luke’s Gospel are consistently being presented as speaking prophetically. First, we have Zechariah who prophesies about his son’s role in salvation history in his equally famous Canticle (Lk 1:67-80). Second, we have Elizabeth who prophesies about the role that Mary is about to play as the “Mother of my Lord” (Lk 1:43). And most importantly, we have Mary prophesying in the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) what God is about to do through her lowly self. How God is about to fulfill his plan of renewing all humankind through the child that Mary is carrying in her womb, —the Prophet who will not only proclaim the Word of God but become himself the Word made flesh. He is the prophet who is destined to rock the history of the whole world, and will boldly proclaim social justice. After all, God has created all of us equal in dignity, as image and likeness of the one God.
As St. Paul once said in Galatians 3:28, “There is no longer a distinction between Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” No more worldly distinctions between rich and poor, high or low in dignity before God’s eyes. No matter what our differences might be in terms of race, color, language, gender or economic or educational status, in God’s eyes, we are all equal in dignity. No wonder we all have the same color of blood and the same odor of feces. We all will turn into dust because nothing really keeps us alive beyond this mortal life except God’s breath, God’s Spirit.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is like grated coconut that needs to be squeezed out first before we can savor and relish the delicious flavor of the story of salvation that God is cooking. This is the story about the Mother of the Prophet of all Prophets, who was called from the time of her conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. The story of the God who chooses the lowly people like Mary, so that He can bring about the true greatness that he wishes to squeeze out of humankind and all creation.
As Paul says, in 1 Cor 1:27-29, “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” Sounds like the Magnificat, doesn’t it?
This is the God whom Mary sings about in Luke’s Magnificat. The God who will “cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly…” so that, at last, through the Good News of the reign of God, the true dignity of the people called to become children of God will fully shine out.
Dear brothers and sisters, we must learn from the way of God by taking part in salvation history that resembles the making of ginataang bilo-bilo by a good Filipino cook. Even if we are sweetened like the boiled glutinous rice balls mixed with an assortment of chopped native fruits for the stew, we are tasteless and lacking in flavor without the coconut milk of God’s Word, the Word that shakes world history, the Word that took flesh in Jesus Christ and continues to take flesh in every disciple by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is the gata, the coconut milk that gives life, taste and flavor to our Bilo-bilo.
