Mary and our sense of sin
WE need to recover our sense of sin. It’s vanishing and subjected to severe attacks. And for this we need to go to Mary. Let me explain.
Just recently, right in the capitol of a US state, and supposedly in the spirit of democracy, together with Christmas decors was a poster saying there is no God, nothing spiritual and supernatural. It’s only the workings of nature. It’s a sentiment echoed actually, and sadly, in many places.
Christmas is nothing other than winter, it said. Thus, there’s no sin as we have been made to understand for years. Of course, in Australia Christmas must be nothing other than summer too. It’s just a season of nature. Nothing more.
Of course, we have to respect freedom. Anyone can say anything he wants. As long as there must be basis, and the process of assessing the veracity of our assertions is not aborted. That would be against freedom too, right?
I would say that there, of course, is God. There also are spiritual and supernatural realities. Even those who deny these truths already betray their beliefs, since their very denials are already an expression of something spiritual that can lead them, if they want, to the supernatural and ultimately to God.
We do not depend entirely on our senses that can capture only the natural and material or sensible things. We are made also to believe, to have faith and beliefs. Our spiritual faculties just cannot get engaged ultimately in something material. They have to be engaged in something spiritual.
Thus, if there is God, there also must be sin. That’s precisely because we, with our spiritual faculties of intelligence and will, with our reason and freedom, can choose to go against God. That’s what sin is.
For Christians, this sense of sin is already highlighted right at the dawn of human history, at the time Adam and Eve in Eden. This was first alluded to when God told the serpent who tempted Eve, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.” (Gen 3,15)
This passage is called the proto-evangelium, since it contains the seed of the future good news of the coming of the Redeemer, the son of God who became man in the virginal womb of Mary, the second Eve, our new Mother.
For us now to keep and properly reinforce this sense of sin we need to look more closely at Mary. Untouched by sin though exposed to it, she distills the final reality of our life as a choice between good and evil, between God and the devil.
She shows us that our battle with evil will never cease in this life. This is shown in those passages in the Book of Revelations where Satan tried to devour the Son about to be born of her (cfr Rev 12,4), relentlessly pursued her (cfr Rev 12,13), and powerless against her, now makes war with the rest of her children (cfr. Rev. 12,17)
Thus, we should not be surprised if our life will always be a struggle. It’s a 24/7 affair, involving everything, material and spiritual, outside and inside us, personal and social, etc.
But with Mary, it will be a war of peace and love. She will help us, giving us tips and the weapons to use. These mainly would first of all be the virtue of humility, indispensable since the devil, full of pride, can never outwit the ways of humility. He cannot understand it. He is helpless before it.
Humility enables us to be simple, melting away our tendency to get complicated, to build our own world outside of the one objectively meant for us by God himself. It’s brings us to God, instead of burying us in our own selves.
Our Lady’s humility is shown in her life fully spent in the little things, telling us that we don’t need big and extraordinary things to be in touch with Christ and enter into the dynamics of our human redemption.
This realization should embolden us, since it will rescue us from a vicious slavery afflicting the present world that gives little value to little things of everyday. With humility, we see these little things as the capillaries that bring God’s grace to the farthest and minutest corner of our life.
It’s what makes us children of God through and through, and not only externally or formalistically. Mary enlivens our sense of God and our sense of sin. Let’s be very Marian!
