By Sister Marie-Aimée, O.C.D.
Have you ever been faced with a clear choice between good and evil? Or maybe between good and less good? It should be easy to choose but we struggle. It might be a big choice with big consequences, like speaking up at work when management proposes something immoral or unjust. More often, it is the daily struggle with our own weakness: the temptation of the snooze button in the dark of early morning, the onset of sudden lethargy at the mere suggestion of exercise, the difficulty of curving our lips into a smile at someone we find irritating, and a thousand more tiny choices that we find so challenging.
This daily encounter with our human frailty goes all the way back to the fall of Adam and Eve. Created in intimacy with God, immune from suffering and death, enjoying the peace of self-mastery as well as harmony with one another, Adam and Eve turned from all the goodness and love offered and chose self over and before God. In turning away from the One who sustained them, the very fabric of human nature was damaged. And every descendent of Adam and Eve has carried the burden, except one.
Preserved from the stain of original sin from the moment of her conception, Mary stands before us as the new Eve. Her “Let it be done unto me” will counter the first Eve’s rejection of God’s loving plan. She will accompany her Son, the new Adam, all the way to the Cross, the new Tree of Life, where His wholehearted embrace of the Father’s plan will save us from sin and death, restoring us to the intimate relationship we were created for.
And our human frailty? Now every struggle can be united to His suffering and death and every time we choose the good, no matter how small, we stand with the new Eve at the foot of His cross and participate in the salvation of the world. And lest we trick ourselves into believing that our little victories earn God’s love or be crushed by the lie that we need to earn it, Mary, in her Immaculate Conception, stands at our side as an icon of the Father’s love. A Father who loves first, who loves completely, not because of what we do, but because of who we are. We are His.
We may be frail, we may be broken, but we are wildly and immeasurably loved and our little yeses, like her big yes, can make His love visible in a world that is longing for Him.
