Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Fra Angelico Annunciation
A wet day and at work! Carroll Stuhlmueller has a good meditation on today's readings. "The key to today's feast lies in the purifying force of obedience to God's will. Such obedience does not consist in complying with external directions nor in any grovelling loss of personal integrity, Yet it is the most compelling, non-negotiable demand - to be fully who we are at the depths of ourselves.
There is always the temptation, experienced from the very beginning by our first parents, to settle for something less which nonetheless seems very good.
Like Mary we are not capitulating to an unreasonable taskmaster but to the expectations of what we really are at the base and root of ourselves".
From Biblical meditations for Advent and the Christmas season Paulist Press 1980.
I am reminded of the Muslim insistence on complete obedience to God. We are freed by our obedience to serve the Lord in so many different ways.

I sing of a maiden that is makeless ...
well may such a lady Godes mother be.

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