Today (December 8) is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception refers not to Jesus’ conception in Mary’s womb, but to Mary’s conception in the womb of her mother, Anne. If we think of Christmas not as a day but as a cycle, today is the day it begins.
Father Francis Kim gave a deeply inspired homily on today’s readings, drawing a straight line between Eve and Mary, and contrasting—without judgment—the two opposing impulses: “Thy will be done,” and “my will be done.” Perhaps the point in life is not to be obsequious nor rebellious but to be the living current of rational thought that oscillates between the two. “Mary is the new Eve,” he said. And perhaps Eve is a new Mary.
In my opinion, this oscillation between “thy will be done” and “my will be done” is the most fascinating movement in human intellectual development. An argument could be made that the hallmark of emotional maturity is when we move beyond the role of the child and learn to make decisions on our own. What is more desirable, a robotic sycophant or a thinking heir? I do not see blind obedience as the ideal state.
In other words, what if the so-called “disobedience” of Eve is not a sin but a virtue—or, at the very least, an essential part of the story. Who is Jesus without his cross? Therefore, who is Jesus without Judas? Or, as we say at Easter: O happy fault / O necessary sin / To win for us so great a Savior. As a writer, I know that there is no story if nothing goes wrong.
Who were the Pharisees? They get a bad rap, but, in fact, they were devout religious leaders of their day, trying their best to follow God’s word. Trouble is, they were so narrow, rigid, and literal, they missed the point.
We are seeing a great shift—from locating authority externally, to locating it internally—in today’s world. Behind the ubiquitous catchphrase “fake news,” we glimpse something deeper: Who are you to tell me what to do? Who are you to tell me what is true? I see these questions as a mark of emergent intelligence and spiritual adulthood.
Before the pandemic, I was a passive consumer of news. There was a certain naïveté to the way I watched a show like, say, 60 Minutes. I never parted the veil. That is no longer true.
Now, I find myself asking questions. Who is selecting which stories 60 Minutes chooses to tell? Who is selecting which stories they choose to leave out? Who is behind the story’s point of view? Does the story present more than one point of view?
Like many, I have become a much more savvy news consumer. And I have fresh respect for free thinkers that I never had before. Take the Flat Earth movement. Here is a group of people who were relentlessly ridiculed and ostracized—but they stayed true to their beliefs. “Make fun of me,” they seemed to say. “Throw eggs at me, make me the butt of your late-night jokes, create whole documentaries about what a dimwit I am. I am doing the maths myself, and even if every single other person on planet Earth disagrees with me—there is something here that doesn’t add up.”
I was not a Flat Earther, myself. But I am fully ready for the new physics—is what we perceive with our senses emerging from 2D?—to give them the last laugh.
And I am 100% down for this massive shift toward locating authority internally, not externally. If there was a defining moment in my health journey—a journey that yielded zero results until I learned to think for myself—it was that. Here is the story I wrote about it. https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/winter-2017/fiction/how-lose-everything-twelve-easy-steps-alethea-black
