December 8, 2025, Immaculate Conception
Second Monday of Advent
Fr. Giovanni Claudio Bottini
The Lord give you peace! I am fr. Giovanni Claudio Bottini, of the Franciscan Biblical School, and I speak to you from the Sanctuary of the Flagellation of Jesus, on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem.
On the journey toward the Nativity of Jesus, the Church today leads us to encounter Mary, his blessed Mother, venerated and invoked under the title of Immaculate. Today expressions resound in all the churches such as “You are all beautiful, O Mary, and in you there is no original stain” (Hymn) or “You are all beautiful, O Mary, the original fault has not touched you” (Antiphon).
But what is this “stain” or “original fault” that has not even “touched” Mary? It is that “inclination to evil” or “wounded nature” that marks every human person and pushes them not to trust in the goodness of God, to be afraid of him, and, worse, to disobey his commandments. Well then, from this “disorder” caused by the sin of Adam and Eve, Mary was freed in advance, from her conception, in view of the merits of Christ.
Where does this truth of faith that the Church proposes for us to celebrate today come from? The first answer is found precisely in the Gospel we have heard. The account of the Annunciation is perhaps one of the most celebrated passages in all of Scripture; one never finishes contemplating this scene where heaven and earth meet and, so to speak, focus on Mary, the Mother of Jesus, whose birth we are preparing to celebrate.
The angel Gabriel, sent by God, greets her as “full of grace.” A greeting that amazes Mary herself because more properly it is as though the angel were saying to her: “Rejoice, O one filled with grace by God!” The Virgin is not called here by her name, as though her true name were: “filled with grace.” To her is revealed her very self, and immediately after, the mission of becoming the Mother of Jesus, the eternal Son of the Father who comes into the world.
On the one hand, it is God who takes the initiative, so that at the origin of Mary’s “immaculate” life is God’s loving intervention; on the other hand, there is Mary’s full response, placing herself at the service of God’s loving plan that will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who for us and for our salvation becomes incarnate, lives, dies and rises.
We then understand the profound connection between the redemption that preserved Mary from the sin of origin and our redemption through Christ. The Preface of today’s Mass expresses it in precise and sublime terms: “You [Holy Father] preserved the Virgin Mary from every stain of original sin, so that, full of grace, she might become a worthy Mother of your Son… From her, most pure virgin, the Son was to be born, the innocent Lamb who takes away our faults.”
Let our hearts, then, dear friends listening, be filled with trusting hope: God has poured into Mary the infinite love he has for the whole human family, a love that always anticipates and accompanies all.
May our will, enlightened by divine light, following the example and through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, speak the yes of faith and prepare us to welcome the incomparable grace of Christmas toward which we are journeying!
Peace and Goodness from Jerusalem!
