Immaculate Conception/ First Sodality

December 8, 2017

I am pondering this image by Yolanda Lopez on this Feast of the Immaculate Conception and anniversary of the first Marianist Sodality (Marianist Lay Community).

The first Marianist Sodality was the creation of a way of being church under an oppressive state for Christianity in Eighteenth Century France. People witnessed to their faith during the French Revolution when the Catholic Church was being suppressed. It was these sodalities who acted as models for continuing to be church while also creating social change against systemic oppression. While the creation of the sodality (December 8, 1800) predates the naming of the Immaculate Conception as dogma (December 8, 1854), all of the images of community (as in the sodality) and sinlessness (as in the immaculate conception) have me thinking about social sin.

I understand social sin as our human finitude not allowing us to create perfect social systems. I am also connecting social sin to original sin because Christians largely interpret original sin from Genesis 3, which is a social situation. So, social sin cannot be separated from original sin. As humans, we create imperfect systems which many times provide the most benefit to those who create the system. Yet, the grace gifted to us by God creates a desire in many to work to improve those systems.

I am quite ambivalent about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (so were Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas albeit for different reasons) because on the one hand it places Mary, a woman, in a distinct relationship in the Trinity. On the other hand, the purity of Mary has been used against women for centuries through the virgin/whore false dichotomy.

I do wonder, however, if her lack of sin allowed Mary to see social systems differently. I wonder if her lack of sin provided her the ability to step outside of social boundaries in the temple and to be the impetus/the caller for change at Cana. I wonder then, when we act out against social injustice and violence and work to make social systems better and dream within the preferential option (meaning those most oppressed do most of the dreaming - thank you Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo), we work with God to transform our sins into that same sinless state as Mary.

The Lopez image makes me think of what the Immaculate Conception looks like when Mary (in this image as Guadalupe/the great goddess Tonantzin) is so situated in human history that she makes her own clothes and probably makes clothes for others. She is focused on the task at hand. She has arm fat and glasses and dark skin, hair, eyes. She is so human that she challenges me to think about sin and sinlessness.

While this post does not have all of the citations of professional theology (article will follow), I invite you to think and to act within those spaces between sin and grace as well as sin and sinlessness and be bold and together with the most poor, marginalized, and vulnerable, work at improving the social systems which are most oppressive today. Maybe it is a letter to congress to support the Dream and Hope Acts. Maybe it is working to create sanctuary spaces and other safer systems for migratory populations. Maybe it is to create more opportunities for food security, composting, and reduction of consumption. Maybe it is to change trade and labor legislation and practices.

Happy feast of the Immaculate Conception and happy anniversary Marianist Lay Communities!