The Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lourdes

The Annunciation to Mary inaugurates the fullness of time, the fulfillment of God’s promises and preparations. God invited Mary, a young Jewish virgin of Nazareth, to conceive his Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s mission is united to that of the Son: he sanctified Mary’s womb and caused her to conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own. From the beginning of his human life, Jesus is Christ, anointed by the Holy Spirit. As families reflect on this mystery, we can remember that God prepared for it through the history of his people, especially through holy women who hoped confidently for salvation. What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is rooted in what it believes about Christ, and Mary’s place in God’s plan helps illumine our faith in him.

As we reflect together on the profound question of why evil exists in a world created by a good and caring God, the Catechism reminds us that no quick answer is enough. The whole Christian faith helps us approach this mystery: the goodness of creation, the reality of sin, God’s patient love, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, the gift of the Spirit, the Church, the sacraments, and our call to blessed life. God freely created a world still journeying toward its ultimate perfection, where physical evil remains while creation has not yet reached that perfection. Angels and human beings, created intelligent and free, can turn away from God; moral evil comes from this misuse of creaturely freedom, not from God. Yet God can bring good even from the consequences of evil, as he brought the greatest good—Christ’s glorification and our redemption—from the rejection and death of his Son. Evil never becomes good, and God’s providence often remains unknown to us; but we firmly believe that he is master of the world and its history, and that at the end we will fully know the ways by which he has guided creation.