Today we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and this feast remembers the two guiding realities of her life:

• She had complete enmity with Satan (Genesis 3:15)
• She was filled with grace, which is God’s life (Luke 1:28)

Of course, these two realities are interrelated: one cannot be at complete enmity with the devil unless he is filled with God’s life, and being filled with God’s life puts one at complete enmity with the devil.

Often we are tempted to think that Mary did not have the struggles that we have, because she was not interiorly tempted by sin; she had no attraction to sin like we do. Well, it is true that Mary did not have the struggles we have – hers were much, much greater. She had the complete and utter hatred of the most powerful being ever created: Satan. He despised her and desired nothing more than her fall. Do you not think that the one who led Eve into sin did not want to repeat his act by having the new Eve fall as well? Do you not think that he put all his considerable strength and power into leading her into sin? Yet this poor little peasant girl stood toe-to-toe in battle with Satan and defeated him by God’s grace. How frustrated the devil must have been!

We who fall to even the least tempter in Hell cannot understand what it must have felt like to have the full weight of Satan and all his armies against you. Yet Mary, by yielding to the fullness of grace that God gave her, was able to resist this terrible power and follow God completely and fully. We need to pray daily that we too might be in enmity with Satan by resisting sin in the power of God’s grace.

Immaculate Mary, pray for us!