Bellarmine University
FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
“A Worthy Container”
Rev. Ronald Knott
December 8, 2014
Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you!
Luke 1:26-38
My grandfather had an expression that has stuck with me all these years. He used to say, “Nobody puts a $50.00 saddle on a $5.00 horse!” By that he meant that you should not invest something of value in something that is worthless to begin with!
As a person who has remodeled several houses, I have learned that it is never a good idea to waste good money trying to remodel a house that was built poorly to begin with!
If you want to give your fiancée a gorgeous, expensive diamond for Christmas, you would never think to have that diamond set it in some cheap plastic ring. You would put it in a worthy ring – a ring with enough gold to hold it securely and to show it off!
All these images came to mind when I reflected on this Feast of the Immaculate Conception. There is a lot poetic language surrounding this feast – a “virgin” mother and a “sinless” woman – but what it is saying is simple. When God decided to become one of us, to come to us in the flesh of a human being, he chose the right “setting” for this precious gift, a gift infinitely more precious than even the Hope Diamond. He chose Mary, blessed among all women, sinless from birth, as the mother of Jesus, as the Mother of God.
Just as “no one would put a $50 saddle on a $5 horse, waste good money remodeling a falling-down wreck of a house or place a precious diamond in a cheap plastic ring, God chose Mary as a worthy setting for his most precious gift to humankind – his only Son! In a nutshell, this is the message behind all the poetic language we are given in this ancient Marian feast!
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