In the December issue of Magnificat, Fr. Sebastian White, OP, the editor, profoundly reflected on the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the sacred garden of God, where no sin or death can enter.
When we think of Adam and Eve in their original innocent state before the Fall, the Garden of Eden was this perfectly ordered sanctuary, filled with all of the abundant life which God had created.
Indeed, the author of Genesis uses priestly language to express the identity of Adam and temple references to articulate the reality of Eden.
Sin destroys this pristine order and harmony. Man and woman are driven out of Paradise and an angel with a flaming sword is positioned to prevent them from re-entering.
Adam must now labor for his food and Eve will experience the pain of childbirth.
Disorder and death, hatred and jealousy, lust and greed enter the world.
A promise from the Father
In Genesis 3:15, however, after the cosmic shipwreck of Original Sin, God utters this astonishing and hopeful prophecy to the serpent.
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head while you strike at his heel.”
God predicts that the son of the woman will destroy the power of evil in an absolute and definitive fashion.
Of course, we know that the woman is Mary and her Son is Jesus.
The Church Fathers called this Scriptural passage the proto-evangelium or the pre-Gospel.
Just when all seems irretrievably lost and broken beyond repair, the Father offers this astonishing promise that He will destroy sin and death through human agency, that the woman will birth a Son who will be the savior of the world.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus addresses His mother twice, once at the wedding at Cana and once from the cross.
In both cases, He calls her “Woman.” To our modern ears, such a thing sounds disrespectful. Of course, this is not the case with Jesus; he is making a theological point.
Mary is not simply a woman, but she is the woman, the one promised in Genesis, the woman of the Apocalypse, adorned with the sun, the new Eve.
Just as the original Eve, the mother of all the living, chose to break her relationship with the Lord, so Mary, in her complete fiat to the will of the Father, accomplished in a sinless life, brings about the restoration of goodness and mercy.
Just as Adam sinned and so all his descendants live under the curse of sin and death, so in Christ, the new Adam, humanity receives the glorious promise of salvation and forgiveness.
St. Louis de Montfort calls Mary the new Garden of Eden, where God places His Son, Jesus Christ in this sacred place of original innocence.
Mary as our mother
This Thursday, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, the Christian belief from the beginning, that God kept the Virgin Mary sinless from the very first moment of her conception, in preparation for her unique role as the Mother of God.
Her purity and virginity become the holy place where God takes flesh and the Eternal Word comes to dwell.
As our mother, given to us from the cross by her Son, Mary shows us the way to Christ by her example, prays for us, and offers us her powerful intercession before the throne of God.
How perfect that in this time of Advent, this sacred season of waiting and preparing for the wonder of Christmas, we celebrate both the Immaculate Conception on December 8 and Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.
Mary carried the Word of God in her womb for nine months, bearing within her virginal and sinless body the fullness of the Lord, as He stepped into human history in order to save us from sin and death.
Just so, through a life deeply rooted in the sacraments and the Scriptures, ardent prayer and heroic charity, a burning faith, and a deep love for the Lord, we bear Jesus within ourselves and share Him with others through our discipleship and witness.
This dynamic defines the whole process of evangelization, epitomized by the Visitation, as the newly pregnant Mary hastens to share her joy with the expectant Elizabeth, a profound and lasting joy rooted in the radiant nearness of Christ.
Every saint had a beautiful and deep relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary, for they realized that she is the perfect disciple, the first one to believe in the fulfillment of the promise made by God in Genesis so long ago.
Her faith and her fiat led to her maternity of the Messiah, God come in human form, in order to save us from within our own humanity.
By praying the Rosary, celebrating the many Marian feasts of the liturgical calendar, offering litanies, and by speaking to the Blessed Mother in our own words, we draw close to her who draws us close to her Son.
I will never forget the closing Mass celebrated by St. John Paul II for World Youth Day in Denver on August 15, 1993.
At the end of his homily, the pope began to speak to Mary, not in some theoretical way or distant fashion, but with a personal conviction, fully believing that she was right there next to him and that he could converse with her as he would with anyone else there.
That beautiful image illustrates how we should approach the Mother of God, with confidence, hope, love, and gratitude, for we know that she is indeed our loving Mother and seeks our holiness and salvation.