At very rare occasions it happens that the calendar of the Cistercian Order and that of the general Catholic Church are in conflict with each other. Today is such a case. Since Cistercians have a special devotion toward the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Cistercian Order assigns a higher rank to the feast of the Birth of Mary that is celebrated today, and therefore this Marian feast takes precedence to the regular Sunday of Ordinary Time. So, while in other Catholic churches the congregation celebrates today the 23^rd Sunday of the year, Cistercian communities all over the world celebrate the solemnity of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin.

Someone may ask the question, what is so special in the birth of the Mother of Jesus that it should replace the weekly celebration of the Day of the Lord, - actually of Christ’s Resurrection? The answer to this question can be summed up briefly by saying that, while Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension were the completion of the work of our salvation, its very beginning, like its first dawning was the conception and birth of Jesus’ Mother: it’s fitting that we celebrate also that.

Whatever happened before the Incarnation of the Son of God, happened as a preparation to the greatest event in human history, the coming and arrival of the promised Messiah in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This preparation was very long, lasted many centuries, - it took the entire Old Testament. Every episode of the Old Testament history was directed toward the coming of Jesus, the words and lives of every Old Testament personality constantly pointed toward the person of the humble itinerant teacher of Galilee. The conception and birth of Mary was the immediate preparation of this truly earth-shaking happening.

Since the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, the entire human race has been immersed into sin. Evil and hatred and lust and greed have had a strong hold over the world; we still experience its grip on our lives today from the daily crimes and sins surrounding us to immense catastrophes like September 11. Into this evil-infested world did the all-holy, all-powerful Son of God enter to rescue the drowning humankind. This tremendous enterprise was gradually prepared by God’s choosing and guiding, educating the Hebrew nation. By no means can we call this process a complete success. Sin, in form of resistance and rebellion against God’s guidance, infiltrated also the Israelite society, and only a small portion of the people remained faithful to the Lord, a portion called “the remnant of Israel.” But, in spite of all the failures, God did not give up His plan, did not abandon His people; the course was set: He continued to work persistently, uncompromisingly with this “remnant” toward the unchanged ultimate goal. When finally the right time has arrived, the Bible calls it the “fullness of time,” God started the immediate preparation.

Assessing the cosmic proportions of the spread of evil and sin in the world, we can realize that the scope of the work of mankind’s salvation, Christ’s salvific act had to be as vast as that of the creation of the world: in fact we can consider Christ’s redeeming work as a new creation. The Bible presents so many parallel details in the Genesis story of creation and Christ’s working out our salvation that we may allow ourselves to look at the person of Mary also in this perspective. In that context we can form an idea for ourselves of the way how God prepared the creation of Adam: He made for Adam a pristine environment, the Garden of Eden in which Adam was able to become the crown of creation. For Jesus, the new, second Adam, this pristine environment was His own Mother, Mary. Mary was the pristine, virgin, immaculate garden, untouched even by the shadow of evil and sin into which Jesus, the new Adam could enter, - a proper, fitting place for the Holy One, - the beginnings of the Kingdom of God, - the spot from which the Kingdom of God could start spreading. In Mary’s holiness, in this total absence of sin and rebellion, God has sent a little piece a heaven on earth, a foothold in the sinful world, a beachhead – if you wish. This is what we celebrate today: the very beginnings of the work of salvation, the times when heaven first touched earth, the birth of the Mother of Jesus.

From this perspective we can see also that Mary, her birth (or any other event of her life) does not divert our attention from Christ in the least, - on the contrary. We can hear the accusation frequently from Protestants that, for Catholics, Mary and the Saints stand as a separating wall between God and the faithful. This is not true at all. If we look for a metaphor, they are not like walls: they’re rather like bridges, leading us closer to God. Every saint, and in particular Mary, want to direct us to Jesus, show the way, they are our companions and helpers on the road. They wish to disappear in the glory of God, just like the stars disappear in the splendor or the rising sun. Just like the stars: we know, they’re there but they became invisible. In today’s feast, if we look at the beautiful garden that Mary is, we’ll look instantly also at the Master of the garden that is Jesus. And looking at this feast we’ll discover also all the beauty, all the poetry in it: the sending of the Messiah took place not as an executive-decision-style managerial order but as a plan carried out by the Father with loving care and tenderness. After all, what could be a more intimate, warm, and tender scene than to see a mother’s love toward her baby? Who could imagine a better environment for a baby than a mother’s womb, a mother’s arms?

            In the person of Mary, the work of salvation took its beginnings: in the person of Jesus, in Bethlehem, on the roads of Galilee and Judea, on the Cross, in the empty tomb, we can see this salvific work’s completion, in the first Pentecost, in the coming of the Holy Spirit, we can see its continuation in the world: the spreading of the Kingdom of God, and finally, in the year of 2002, that is today, right now, the message reaches also us, and this message is a call, a challenge, an order to become partners of Jesus and Mary in the continuing work of the world’s redemption, that we allow the Kingdom of God to grow within us, and make spread the Kingdom of God, this garden, this foothold of heaven, spread it also in our own environment, in our homes, at our workplaces, schools, wherever we live and work. In this way we’ll become active participants of the salvation history which is still going on in the world and will be going on until the second coming of Christ at the Last Judgment. And in this way we can see that the Birthday of Mary is not just a rather obscure feast, a more or less fairy-tale-like event but an integral part of the process how the salvation worked out by Jesus Christ has reached us, and how we, too, can and should become a part of it.

          Let’s discover in today’s feast God’s unchangeable faithfulness to His plan made long ago, long before we ever existed, - or, when we existed only in God’s loving design. We read in the letter to the Ephesians: “He [God] destined us in love to be his children through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” (Eph 1:5) At every moment of the history of salvation you and I, we all were present in God’s mind: He guided the chosen people for us, He made the Blessed Virgin the Mother of Jesus for us, He sent His Son to be born as a Baby for us, He allowed Jesus to be crucified for us, and He raised Jesus for us. Let’s be grateful to God for all these, and let’s realize our own greatness: if we were so important for God, the Creator of the universe, then we, in fact, must be somebody, we truly make a difference.  Amen.