Hebrews 2:11-13
Psalm 40:6-10
Luke 1:24-38

Mary Immaculate

We begin our seventh week of journey toward the door of a tomb. We have trekked through long valleys, reached the summits of high mountain ranges, and have contemplated the sublime, which is God. The Sublime, which is Sinai — which is light, but also volcanic thunder; revelation, but also mind-bending mystery; beauty, but also fearsome power; the earthquake, the tornado, the lightning. Last week we beheld a terrible symmetry. The dignity of an angel is an awe-inspiring, knee-bending thing. They are not chubby babies with wings, but imposing, prepossessing, and awesome figures. To come into their presence is to experience a wholesome fear. They must say, at each encounter with a human, "Be not afraid!"

Last week we beheld "a fearful symmetry" (to use Blake's words): on one side the Archangel Gabriel offers a priest of the Temple honor and that most-desired gift, a son to carry on his name. The priest rejects these divine blessings because they do not conform to his expectations. He rejects God because "he seeks his life" — his world view, his own "reasonableness," his calculus for what life is and how it must be lived. And he loses his life, receiving the sign of Jonah, sealed for nine months in the belly of a great fish, so to speak. On the other side, the Archangel Gabriel offers a teenage girl a Cross. She embraces her Cross, losing her life — accepting that an mysterious "Spirit" (the like of which she's never heard) will come upon her, impregnating her; accepting that her dreams of marriage and family will forever be lost; accepting that she is apt to be stoned, which is fornication's penalty. She loses her life .... and finds it (though other losses and a sword await her).

In both cases, God's sublime power reverberates through the human lifeworld. As the great cataclysm heard so long ago closed Eden with thunder and Heaven's fire, so another profound shaking of Creation's timbers occurs, once more, but this time it is as silent as spring melting a world of ice, as silent as the soul's consent to the Divine Will, as silent, and as profound, as our "Yes" to God.

As we considered last week, Gabriel's annunciation to Zechariah, is a "son of promise," St. John the Baptist, who, in his fullness will show himself to be conspicuously the "man of Eden" — dressed only in natural clothing; no spot of corrupt city life upon him; a vegetarian who ate only the Edenic food of honey cakes called manna, not insects (in Greek, ενκρις / enkris, not ακρις / akris). In this, he keeps the Noahic Covenant (eat no blood) and fulfills Psalm 81 ("I will feed you with the finesh wheat and honey .... O that my people would listen to me!"). His ministry will be no "side show," no marginal thing, but will re-order his whole world, preparing people to begin their journey toward Eden in the form of atonement with God in readiness of His Kingdom.

Gabriel's annunciation to a teenage girl named Mary sheds divine light on her fullness as the "new Eve." It will be her "Yes" to God, which now redeems (in our own hearing this morning!) our first mother's "No." "Behold your Mother!" Jesus declares from the Cross. For surely she is the true Mother of all humankind, the true and everlasting Eve, and not the wayward and forgettable one ... whose eyes went everywhere except upon God.

The moment when Elizabeth and Mary meet was singled out in the late medieval West as being worthy of a feast day: "the Visitation." For at this divine appointment, a new grace has shone upon the human lifeworld — the two conceived for Eden meet for the first time, John within Elizabeth and the first-born of Eden after the Fall, the Most Holy Theotokos.

Being Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics in past celebrations of the Annunciation, the Hermitage offered that Mary's immaculate conception is significant for this reason: that in this spotless mystery Mary is to become the first citizen of Eden to be born on the earth. Roman Catholic faithful continue to remember this in the prayer, the Salve Regina, which we continue to chant each night at the Hermitage:

This morning it is important to articulate one point carefully and clearly: the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church does not reject the immaculate conception. The ancient Catholic Church believes that Mary was born without Original Sin, indeed, that everyone is born without Original Sin — perfect, pure, a spotless child of God and bearing His royal Image.

The young Mary's holiness was conspicuous from her birth, and soon she became a daughter of the Temple on Mt. Zion enjoying a serene girlhood in these holy precincts. Her continued holiness lay not in being encased in a magic shield (some sort of magic, perpetual immaculate conception descending from Heaven!). How could it?! Such a contraption would have rendered her little more than a passive puppet or a lifeless robot. No, the innocence, the purity, the holiness, the sinless sovereignty of our Blessed Mother, lay in her continued commitments and faithfulness to God. It is not for nothing that she stands at a great crossroads as a teenager, for is this not the place when we all choose: either to stay on the path of faithfulness or veer from it? The Most Holy Theotokos was and is above all, and through all, the faithful one.

A long time ago I was praying at first light in a little house loaned to me while priest-in-charge at a large Anglo-Catholic church. The occasion for this assignment, as it turned out, was the unfaithfulness of a rector. I will never forget that morning: there on my knees beside a bed, looking out over a bay as sun rose, I turned to the left and saw in my room a painting of old man also on his knees praying. At that moment I saw something that I had never seen before: I saw that all the men in the world who rise about the debris of life scan the horizon for a cause worth dying for. And I saw that all the women in the world who rise above life's flotsam and jetsam scan the horizon for a cause worth being faithful to. The great exemplar of the first is our Lord Jesus Christ. The great exemplar of the second is His Mother. It is for this reason that all of us feel goose bumps sweeping up and down our bodies whenever we hear the words, "Be it unto to me according to thy word." The next line in Luke reads, "And the angel departed from her" .... with mirth sweeping over Heaven, we might add. For here was humanity's great "Yes," and she would become the holy gate through which would pass God .... as she would also become the gate through which all humankind might begin their trek back to Eden. I say might because this journey can only be completed one step at a time in faithfulness, her kind of faithfulness. Here is Mary's immaculate character. She is the faithful one.

The journey toward holiness and perfect union with God, which is Eden, is a journey of individual steps and a faithfulness that must continue from moment to moment. Over time, we arrive to a place of confirmed and stable sinlessness, where temptations no longer dog us. It is here where we come to the crest of a hill, and the first air of Eden is detected.

What is it like to breathe Eden's air? Well, I can't say. But I do remember as a boy riding in the family car for hours watching with anticipation out the window for the soil beside the road to turn from dung-colored loam, which would stain your hands, to that white sand you could dig in for hours, but which only cleaned you more and more. Finally, trees and plants disappeared, and the sky took over with wide vistas all around .... on distant bays and salt water inlets. In those days we had no air conditioning, so the scenes outside were close-up. And soon those first whiffs of cool, salt air could be detected: the ocean! That most pure of all places on earth .... at least in the 1950s. The city and "the fever of the world" (Wordsworth) had vanished behind us. Here was only the good and the pure. We discovered over time that the salt water healed our wounds, that it cleared our heads and noses, and that it surrounded us with life: purity, a mighty and unconquerable purity.

From here the Kingdom of God is no abstraction, not to the heart of a child. It is .... for the self to be touched by goodness and light in a setting of pure creativity. On this day, we cannot fail to say, it is a fellowship founded by the Most Holy Theotokos, the Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea. Her immaculate character is the same one offered to each of us at birth. Longing for the pure air, we set our path directly toward Eden as she did, as St. John the Baptist did. It is a straight path, a narrow path. All we need do is .... stay on it. It has already been blazed for us.

Why do I say the Kingdom of Heaven? Because this is its essence. As we recently read in our weekday Mass lections,