SPEAKER_00: As we're standing here, just this incredible chapel of the Eucharistic Miracle, I see there's a new painting there that you can see.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you can see Jose Gregorio Hernandez, the newest saint of Venezuela, in that depiction.
SPEAKER_00: So it's uh it's a beautiful picture there with Saint Francis in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: But this is a historic and beautiful place where we are, and there's something almost overwhelming about celebrating today's feast in this particular chapel.
SPEAKER_00: The church gives us the Immaculate Conception, a feast that speaks of God's power to make us holy.
SPEAKER_00: Think of that.
SPEAKER_00: And here we stand in a church where God once chose to show in a dramatic way and a way that is enduring forever, his power to remain with us in the Holy Eucharist.
SPEAKER_00: The Immaculate Conception is often misunderstood, and sadly, even by priests around the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's astonishing to me, but it's a simple dogma of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: Mary's holiness is God's work.
SPEAKER_00: God needed a vessel that was pure and sinless so that his son could be born.
SPEAKER_00: Her purity is not her accomplishment, it is his gift, given not for her glory, but for our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning, the very instance of her existence, God did for Mary what only divine love could do.
SPEAKER_00: He preserved her entirely from sin, so that nothing, absolutely nothing, would obstruct his entrance into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Meditate on that.
SPEAKER_00: It was, as we might say, her spiritual DNA, a gift designed not for privilege for her, but for his mission.
SPEAKER_00: Belief in the Immaculate Conception is belief in a God who prepares, who equips, who foresees.
SPEAKER_00: A God who does not improvise salvation, but weaves it carefully from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: He's the same God that tells Jeremiah from the very beginning, I knew you in your mother's womb.
SPEAKER_00: I knew you before you were born.
SPEAKER_00: I consecrated you.
SPEAKER_00: God has always anointed his servants way before the world meets them.
SPEAKER_00: In Mary, we see this in a very perfect way.
SPEAKER_00: She is the new Eve, God's masterpiece of readiness.
SPEAKER_00: She is full of grace, grace that fills every corner of her being.
SPEAKER_00: She is the one whom God's plan finally meets, a heart that will never resist him.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is in this moment that everything in Mary Mary is and she is received, and it is in this that she becomes a mirror for us.
SPEAKER_00: St.
SPEAKER_00: Paul asks us, What do you have that you did not receive?
SPEAKER_00: What do you have that you did not receive?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer, of course, is nothing.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that I like to remind couples at the very end of their marriages.
SPEAKER_00: I say to them that there was a young man that was once asking all these different theologians, and he went to Mother Teresa and he asked Mother Teresa, Mother, I'm about to be married.
SPEAKER_00: What do I need to do?
SPEAKER_00: How can I prepare?
SPEAKER_00: What tools do I need?
SPEAKER_00: And Mother Teresa said to him, Everything you need, you already have.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm telling you today on this important feast day.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that you need, you already have.
SPEAKER_00: Our gifts, our strengths, our opportunities, our existence, everything is grace from God.
SPEAKER_00: Mary simply shows us what happens when grace is allowed to take its full course.
SPEAKER_00: We're in this chapel of the Eucharistic miracle, as I mentioned to you earlier today, a place where God preserves something very special.
SPEAKER_00: In 1730, stolen hosts were later found and returned to this church.
SPEAKER_00: Not one decayed, not one crumbled.
SPEAKER_00: Today, almost 300 years later, they remain whole, incorrupt.
SPEAKER_00: Scientists have studied them, popes have affirmed them.
SPEAKER_00: But the explanation is not the point.
SPEAKER_00: The miracle persists not to satisfy curiosity, but to kindle faith.
SPEAKER_00: Mary was preserved from sin so Christ could enter the world.
SPEAKER_00: These hosts are preserved from corruption so that we may never forget that he remains in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Her yes brought him into human history.
SPEAKER_00: The Eucharist brings him into our present moment.
SPEAKER_00: Her very existence proclaims God's fidelity to his promises.
SPEAKER_00: These hosts that you will see after Mass proclaims his fidelity to his people.
SPEAKER_00: So today, as we continue to journey, ask Mary in a very special way today when you receive Jesus in the Eucharist, ask for a heart as available as hers, as gentle as hers, not to be so rough with people.
SPEAKER_00: As Christ, ask Christ for a faith as steady as this miracle.
SPEAKER_00: Ask for the grace to stop resisting what God wants to do in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because if Mary reveals what we were created for, the Eucharist reveals how God intends to get us there.
SPEAKER_00: One communion, one yes, one act of trust at a time.
SPEAKER_00: It just takes a simple yes, I will be better.
SPEAKER_00: I will resist sin.
SPEAKER_00: I will resist the temptation to be nasty, to be miserable.
SPEAKER_00: I choose joy.
SPEAKER_00: I choose grace.
SPEAKER_00: So standing here in this chapel where heaven left us the mark on bread, let us thank God for his providence, his tenderness, his restless desire to make us holy and to be one with him.
SPEAKER_00: And let us continue to walk here in this land of Saint Catherine of Siena to be renewed with a grateful heart, carrying the grace of this moment into the next steps of our lives and in our story.
SPEAKER_00: Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us for us.