Herbert McCabe, OP on the Immaculate Conception

Reposting from 2014:

We often remark here at Mirror of Justice that the central questions of Catholic legal theory are those of human anthropology and human nature. (Even if, like Elizabeth Anscombe, I'm not at all sure that [modern] reflection on "the self" is a meaningful or important philosophical question, see Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics at p. 67.) On what it means for said human nature to be redeemed, here is an excerpt from a homily by my late friend Herbert McCabe, OP on today's feast:

In Mary the redemption reaches down to the roots. In us it is not yet radical, but through our death in Christ and our resurrection in him it is to become so. So far we are only sacramentally redeemed, in the sacramental death and resurrection of baptism - this is something real, it is not merely play-acting, but it is only sacramental, it is not yet in our flesh. The redemption of Mary is pre-sacramental, she does not need baptism or Eucharist, she needs Christ only and has him in her existence in her very flesh. For this reason her redemption, which is pre-sacramental, is a sign and foretaste of the post-sacramental, the life of the risen body, the future kingdom. Her Assumption is the beginning of the resurrection of all who are taken up into Christ’s resurrection.

This, then, is how we are to cash the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This is the difference in practice that the doctrine makes. We are not to look for this difference in the biography of Our Lady, in her character or in her behaviour. In this sense the doctrine is not about that. It is not, for instance, about the fact that she committed no sin. You could hold, as Thomas Aquinas did, that she was sinless and still deny, as he did, the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception does not make that sort of difference to Mary; it did not make any noticeable difference to her - as I have suggested there is no reason to suppose that she knew about it. What it makes a difference to is our understanding of what it means for her to be redeemed and therefore what it will eventually mean for us to be redeemed. To assert this doctrine is to assert the mysterious fact that our holiness will not stop short of the roots of our being, that we too are to become radically holy. 

And this is a strange doctrine. At the moment we are forgiven sinners; we are forgiven but we are people who have been sinners, we have been subject to the sin of the world, moreover we have at times opted for the sin of the world. Both things are true: we have contrition for our sins even as we celebrate our forgiveness. Being realistic and honest and therefore contrite about our sins is the sign and result of our being forgiven. (That is why confession is an important part of the sacrament of Penance.)

What we celebrate on the feast of the Immaculate Conception is that Christ’s love for us brings us further than this. What he wants for us is not just that we should be forgiven sinners but that we should be as though sin had never been. Redemption for us will involve a rebirth from an immaculate conception. Our redemption will not just be the successful end of a journey, the triumphant culmination of the history of man, but in some utterly mysterious way we will be freed from our history, or our history will be taken up into some totally new pattern in which even our sins become part of our holiness. We will somehow be able to accept them as God accepts them. There will be no more sorrow for sin, no more remorse over the past, no more contrition; we will be radically and totally free: ‘And all things shall be well and all manner of things shall be well ... when the fire and the rose are one’ (God Matters, pp. 213-14).