Immaculate Conception novena to place 2022 in Mary’s hands: Day 8

The drama of freedom God accepts to the very end for love, but promises that a woman's son will crush the head of the ancient serpent

We entrust to Mary and Joseph the coming year, asking her to guide us in and through it, that each day of 2022 will bring us closer to her Son.

Reflection

The mystery of the Immaculate Conception of Mary … reminds us of two fundamental truths of our faith: original sin first of all, and then the victory over it through Christ’s grace, a victory that shines in a sublime way in Mary Most Holy.

The existence of what the Church calls “original sin” is unfortunately glaringly obvious, if we merely look around us and first of all within ourselves. The experience of evil is in fact so consistent that it imposes itself and raises in us the question: where does it come from? Especially for a believer, this question is even more profound: if God, who is absolute Goodness, created all things, where does evil come from?

The first pages of the Bible (Gn 1-3) respond precisely to this fundamental question which challenges every human generation with the narrative of Creation and of the fall of our first parents: God created all things so that they might exist and in particular he created the human being in his own image; he did not make death but death entered the world through the envy of the devil (cf. Wis 1: 13-14; 2: 23-24) who, rebelling against God, deceived men and women and induced them to rebel as well.

This is the drama of the freedom which God accepts to the very end for love, but promises that a woman’s son will crush the head of the ancient serpent (Gn 3: 15).

~Benedict XVI, December 8, 2008

Prayer

This is the oldest recorded Marian prayer, outside of the texts from the Gospels:

We fly to Thy protection, O Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin.