Hail, full of grace! Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Hail, full of grace!

My dear brothers and sisters, we are gathered today, on this great solemnity of the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary to reflect precisely on these words of the angel Gabriel to Our Lady: “Hail, full of grace!”

We are here to celebrate these momentous words because from the moment of Her conception, Mary – our Blessed Mother, was free from the stain of original sin. To quote from Ineffabilis Deus, the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which was pronounced by Pope Blessed Pius IX in the year 1854:

Mary, the most holy Mother of God, by virtue of the foreseen merits of Christ, our Lord and Redeemer, was never subject to original sin, but was completely preserved from the original taint, and hence she was redeemed in a manner more sublime.

It is because she is without stain of original sin that, like Christians since the birth of the Church, we can sing:

Tota pulchra es Maria et macula originalis non est in te

You are most beautiful Maria and the stain of original sin is not in you

But as with all things Catholic, the mysteries of our faith are not only about Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, or just His angels and saints. It is also about us. So, what is it that the Immaculate Conception tell us about the human being? What is the message of the Immaculata today?

The most obvious lesson, of course, is that of dignity. The God bearer, the Theotokos, had to be so dignified, that sin could not have ever touched her. This is the dignity to which God the Father calls us as well; to be immaculate! In fact, this was the dignity for which we were intended! As we hear St. Paul teach us today:

he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,

to be holy and without blemish before him

Remember that Eve was created immaculate. At her creation, Eve, our first mother, bore no stain of sin. It was because of her choice, and that of her husband Adam, that we today suffer the stain of sin. Nevertheless, through the passion, death and resurrection of His Son, God the Father enables us to ascend to the dignity he afforded at conception of Our Lady, and continues to afford Her, to be immaculate bodies in heaven, without the stain of sin.

The second lesson of the Immaculata is that of humility. Recall the words of Our Blessed Mother in response to the angel:

              “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” (Lk 1:38)

Invitation to this dignity of immaculateness does not mean that we are equal to Our Blessed Mother. Living, as we do, following the French Revolution and in the era of democracy, we seem to think that equality is divine, and hierarchy unacceptable. We must remember, however, that there is – and will always be – a hierarchy in heaven. We are not now, nor ever will be, equal to Our Blessed Mother, just as Our Lady is not equal to Her Son.

Let us listen again to the words of St. Paul to the Ephesians:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens

Our Lady was one of these spiritual blessings. It was, to repeat the words of Blessed Pius IX ,

by virtue of the foreseen merits of Christ… [that Our Lady] was never subject to original sin, but …completely preserved from the original taint.

In other words, it was through the future merits of Her Son, foreseen by God the Father, that Our Lady could be full of grace.

And Maria continues to be the vessel through which the grace gushing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus drips down into our lives. She intercedes for us constantly in the court of heaven, so that our prayers may be answered.

My dear brothers and sisters, you must be scandalized to hear me preaching in favour of hierarchy. But I invite you to consider that to preach hierarchy is not to preach against dignity. To preach, “know your place”, is not to suggest that you should not reach for the stars, not aim for greatness. Rather, it is to preach, know how you go about this exercise in magnifying the Lord. Do so in a manner that imitates Our Lady’s dignity, which is to be without sin. You are called to this greatness, and you are aided by the sacraments of Our Lord, and the powerful intercession of His Mother. Aim therefore for greatness, but without succumbing to sin of desire, envy, jealousy, malice.

In her prayer, the Magnificat, the Immaculata, proclaims:

Our Lord lifts up the lowly and brings down the mighty.

What is clear is that Our Lord is not opposed to social mobility. However, in the larger scheme of things social mobility is not as important as the mobility – no, nobility! – that he afforded through the miracle of the Immaculate Conception. The mobility, the nobility, that ensured that human nature, which had willingly and knowingly sundered itself from the divine, could now be raised back up to heaven through the cooperation of Her who knew no sin. Let us, therefore, dear brothers and sisters, on this great feast day, dedicate ourselves to lives of impeccability so that we may be worthy of the heavenly blessings that have been given to us.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Ó Maria, concebida sem pecado, rogai por nós que recorremos a vós

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; Amen.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Igreja da N.S. da Conceicão, Pangim, on 8 Dec 2025.)

(Image reference: The Immaculate Conception, Francisco de Zurbarán, 1628 – 1630, Museo del Prado.)

Sing the Song of the Baptist: Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

As much as the genre is largely debased today, the Hindi film song comes from a respectable tradition of Urdu and Persian poetry. A feature of this poetry is its mystical dimension. This is to say, poems about the beloved, are just as much applicable to our relationship with God, who is, in fact, the true beloved.

Take some of the lyrics of film song titled “Aap Aaye Bahar Aayi” which translates to, You come and spring arrives.

sare zamane pe mausam suhane pe                                    
is dil diwane pe virana si thi chayi                                        
aap aaye bahar aayi                                                               

 

This world, this clime,

my restless heart, were all a wilderness.
(But) you arrived, and you brought spring along.

Further verses from this song read:

aapka hi tha sabko intezaar                                                   
aap ke lie sab the bekarar

hawaye ghataye fizaye bagho me phule ne jhulo ne 

li jhum ke angdhayi aap aaye bahaar aayi                          

For you alone were we all waiting

For you alone were our hearts restless

the zephyrs, the clouds, the climes, the bowers, the flowers,

all leapt with joy, for you arrived and brought spring with you.

Imagine this song was sung by St. John the Baptist to greet Our Lord, whose first coming we will commemorate in three weeks, and you see how this poem takes on a profound depth. The reason I quote this song is to illustrate a portion of the first reading, from the Prophet Isaiah:

On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
and from his roots a bud shall blossom.

Reflecting on this passage St. Jerome says, “The land that before brought forth thorns,” is now blessed. In turn St. Ambrose reflected: “The flower is Christ, who vanquished the foul odor of worldly filth, poured forth the fragrance of eternal life.” He goes on to teach:

When he blossoms in our land, makes fragrant the field of the soul, and flourishes in his church, we can no longer fear the cold or rain, but only anticipate the day of judgment.

My dear brothers and sisters, we must take this verse from Isaiah to understand how when this shoot, i.e. Christ, blossomed in our own land, it perfumed the territory that before the birth of Christianity on our shores brought forth only thorns. The Christian message transformed this land, the virana of the film song, and has made it attractive to the Gentiles, who flock to this land, as Isaiah prophesied:

On that day, the root of Jesse,
set up as a signal for the nations,
the Gentiles shall seek out,
for his dwelling shall be glorious.

And this prophecy is true of most regions where, thanks to the majority of the population embracing the faith, the Christian faith has transformed the land. Look at the flows of migration internationally. Look at the flows of migration in our own country! Regard the flows of migration to Goa, or indeed to those suburbs of Bombay where Catholics have traditionally been dominant. The gentiles are drawn like bees because they sense the fragrance of the bud on the rod of Jesse and, in some sense, have no choice.

Yet where the light of Christ does not shine through the lives of his members, the land returns to produce thorns. As God said to Adam and Eve after their sin “Cursed is the ground because of your works” (Gen 3:17). It is our works that cause the earth to produce thorns. One can see this in our unfortunate country, where under the banner of decolonization, the gentle yoke of Christianity is thrown off, and gentilism is once again rampant. We see the disregard for the dignity of the individual, and a falling of order into chaos. This applies as much to Europe, and the Americas, where after centuries of the effects of the French revolution, anti-clericalism, the assertion of the will alone, the celebration of the autonomous individual, and the disregard of grace, the lands that once shone with the light of Christ; that once perfumed the world with His Gospel, now lie in shambles.

In his reflection on the very verses that we contemplate in the first reading today, St. Jerome points out that

It is also to be noted that the lamb and the kid will not dwell and recline with the wolf and the leopard, but the wolf and the leopard will imitate the innocence of the lamb and the kid.

This reflection is not irrelevant to our contemplation of how Christianity perfumes the land. We need to ask ourselves, whether we are fulfilling our Christian duty of offering a model to the world, or have we conceded defeat and are we imitating the gentiles who surround us? In other words, are we like St. John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness? Or, are we not?

My dear brothers and sisters, I ended my homily last week with the suggestion that Advent is the period of penitence and waiting. We wait not for the Christ Child to be born, but for the second coming of Our Lord, this time in power. Recall the words of Our Lord from the lectionary a few weeks ago:

when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? (Lk 18:8)

The time of our waiting, my dear brothers and sisters, must be a time filled with good works – filling the world of Our Lord with His perfume. Good works that are carried out in patient expectation that when Our Master returns, He will be able to say to us, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave… enter into the joy of your master” (Mt 25: 23).

If we do not spend our lives in this labour, the warnings of St. John the Baptist in the Gospel today should give us pause:

Even now the axe lies at the root of the trees.
Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit
will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

He will clear his threshing floor
and gather his wheat into his barn,
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

We must, therefore, once again in the words of the Baptist, “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.”

The good works we can produce, my dear brothers and sisters, is through our lives and words, sing of the goodness of our Lord to the gentiles we live among, so that they too might glorify God for His mercy, and be saved on the Day of Judgement.

St. John the Baptist, preacher in the wilderness, pray for us.

St. John the Baptist, proclaimer of Christ, pray for us.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 6 Dec 2025.)

(Image reference: St. John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1750-80, The Met.)