Immaculate Conception of the B.V. Mary
Jerusalem
December 8, 2025
Brothers and sisters, may the Lord give you His peace.
What does this feast, this Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary say to each of us today, at this time? I think first of all, this Solemnity, the figure of Mary as Immaculate, reminds us of a simple and fundamental truth, that what we really need to fear and be afraid of, what really pollutes the human heart, and therefore our human dignity, is sin. Today perhaps the sense of sin has been lost.
Sometimes it is trivialized or minimized. And we have begun to confuse sin with guilt. There are sins we do that generate guilt in us, we feel guilty.
And sometimes we do acts or actions that are not sin but still generate guilt in us. And other times there are sins that we commit that do not generate guilt at all, because in public opinion it is something that is now accepted. When we lose sight of the point of reference for determining what is sin and what is not sin, to educate ourselves in a sin consciousness, we need always and continuously a reference to God's word.
At the singing of the Gospel just now, as the deacon took the book of the word and brought it so solemnly here to the ambo, I was thinking just this: the liturgy already tells us everything. It tells us what is really important for us, it tells us what the ultimate meaning of the Christian life is. Everything is already there in the liturgy. And I was thinking how we so solemnly internalize that word, it becomes such a solemn gesture, and then what do we do with that word that we have heard and that daily we have the grace to hear. And we have the grace to listen here, in this land, where that word has become flesh, where that word has been actualized.
Without a comparison, a comparison, a meditation of that word and my life, really we too will begin to lose the sense of sin and begin to justify what justifies the world, without even feeling the guilt anymore. And it struck me because we have so many fears in our lives, the world is afraid now of pollution, of climate change, we are afraid in our lives of disease, of war, that another war will come back or that we will amplify the tension that is left anyway, but maybe for students you are also afraid of the exams to take, to face. I wonder if we are still afraid of losing closeness with God.
The fear of distance from God, which is the real loss, because it touches the root of our life, just as we heard in the first reading. I think the first great message of this solemnity is precisely this: not to live in indifference and to educate ourselves and help us to return to a true sense of sin, without the phobia, without seeing sin everywhere, or without reducing sin only to the Sixth Commandment, without a phobia of sin but also without an indifference with respect to my evangelical life and with respect to what I have professed.
After all, Scripture makes it clear: If we say we are sinless, we deceive ourselves, John reminds us in his first letter. And again St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians reminds us that Christ died for our sins. And so if we remove sin from our lives, somehow it is as if we empty redemption.
We take the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ in vain. But there is a second aspect that this solemnity of the Immaculate Conception says to us. While on the one hand it tells us all the seriousness and gravity of sin, of that uncovering ourselves naked and therefore with the need to hide. On the other hand, this is a beautiful test of whether what we do is sin or not. When one sins one feels naked and needs to hide. Just try to think, because there are so many things that even in our lives as lesser brothers have now become a practice, and maybe they are not according to our rule, that rule we have professed.
Let's try to think if that same thing I would do it in front of one of my brothers or in front of the community. Or if I were to make it public. And I don't think, believe me, I don't think of the Sixth Commandment.
But all the rest are things that we do, that have now become practice, but that we would never have the courage to make public. Because deep down we know, but we don't even feel the guilt anymore.
However, there is also an announcement of hope. There is that Adam where you are. There is a God who continually does not give in to our frailty, does not resign himself to the fact that we are miserable, but continues to love us. This is really the Gospel: good news for our lives. That despite everything, despite my limitations, despite this inclination of mine to always sin, there is a grace that is stronger. There is a desire of God toward me that is stronger, that always wins, that never resigns and that continually comes knocking on my door and saying, "Francis, where are you?" I am afraid of you God. Do not be afraid, for I want to embrace you again. The Immaculate Virgin Mary says just that. It is the feast of hope.
It is the solemnity that fills our hearts with joy because there is a chance for each of us. Grace is stronger than evil. Holiness, dear brothers and sisters, is possible. And God does not tire of coming after us.
The Second Vatican Council recalls this well, in Lumen Gentium. Mary, already arrived at perfection, walks before us as a shining model. We are here to look to Mary, patroness of our order, as a shining model. We want to be like her, we want to live Christianly as she lived. And he always says in Lumen Gentium, the faithful instead still advance in the daily struggle to grow in holiness and overcome sin. Our life is a daily struggle, but we have before us a model that gives us hope.
To look to the Immaculata then is to rediscover the true horizon of the Christian life. Let us not resign ourselves to mediocrity. Let us not get used to sin. Above all, let us not lose the desire to become holy. She, Mary, the full of grace, as we were reminded by the Angel's announcement, reminds us that the beauty of man is not measured by success, but by the transparency of the heart.
That our life and our beauty is not measured by how much visibility or how much power we have, but by purity. Our beauty is not measured by possession, by the things we have, but by great inner freedom. And so, as we contemplate today Mary Immaculate patroness of our order, let us ask God for a pure heart, capable of always distinguishing good from evil, but above all a heart capable of allowing itself to be healed and transformed by His grace and mercy not to be afraid of God, but to always run to Him in the confessional.
Inside in that confessional there is always a God with open arms who can't wait to be able to embrace us again.
Praise be to Jesus Christ.
