The feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (December 8 most years, celebrated this year on December 9) confuses many people. On a basic level, some do not realize this feast celebrates Mary’s conception rather than the conception of her son, Jesus. Once this misunderstanding is cleared up, questions still linger. Why, when we’re preparing to celebrate the incarnation of God in the birth of Jesus Christ, would we pause to celebrate the conception of Jesus’ mother? What’s so special about the way Mary was conceived?
The short answer is: Mary’s conception was unique and essential to our redemption. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception declares that “To become the mother of the Savior, Mary ‘was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.’”[1] These “gifts” entailed nothing less than the grace of redemption, setting Mary apart from her human peers. When the angel Gabriel greeted her as “full of grace,” this freedom from sin, given her by God’s own hand, Catholics interpret, is what he was referring to.
If we were to translate this idea into terms Harry Potter fans could relate to, we might say Mary was a bit like a Muggle-born. In Harry Potter, magic occurs most often in magical families like the Weasleys, but it “pops up” sometimes in Muggle families, as in the case of Hermione Granger and Lily Evans Potter, Harry’s mother. While Mary’s conception was unique in the human race, Muggle-borns are rare, but not unique. But Lily’s status as a Muggle-born – as someone set apart from her peers by a particular grace – is one of a few significant (and likely intentional) ways in which Lily Potter alludes to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
To explain, let’s go back to Mary a moment. Mary was full of God’s grace from the start, and this redemptive grace had two primary and interrelated effects. First, it gave her a preliminary share in the redemption of the human race. Secondly this graced state in which Mary was conceived, born and lived afforded her the freedom to choose to participate in God’s plan of salvation. The angel Gabriel did not come to inform Mary that she was already pregnant with the Christ. Mary had the freedom to choose her response, and she said “yes.” Catholics call this Mary’s fiat, a Latin phrase that sums up her self-emptying response: “May it be done to me according to your word.”[2] In so doing, she, an insignificant young girl from a marginalized group (the Jews), played an important role in the redemption of the world. St. Irenaeus famously said that Mary, in her fiat, “became to herself and to the whole human race a cause of salvation.”[3]
The role of personal choice is an important theme in Harry Potter, and her birth into the magical community does not make Lily Evans’ key role in the eventual salvation of the world a fait accompli or a “done deal”. She must choose, constantly. She chooses to accept her invitation to Hogwarts, she chooses to marry James Potter and not Severus Snape, choosing (as it were) Gryffindor over Slytherin. She chooses to be a member of the Order of the Phoenix, fighting Voldemort rather than either joining him or giving up.
But one choice by Lily is ultimate: her free choice to throw herself in front of her infant son to protect him from Voldemort’s killing curse. Lily’s sacrifice is the essential forerunner of her son’s more important, more widely reaching sacrifice, and in this way she alludes to Mary. Both women made self-emptying choices: choices that made them willing vessels for the plans of others. Mary’s choice to accept a miraculous, extra-marital pregnancy threatened all her future plans – even, perhaps, her life and safety, had not Joseph chosen to accept and protect her. For Lily, the instinct to protect her son even at the cost of her own life afforded the ultimate plans of Albus Dumbledore to defeat Voldemort. Neither woman understood the plans of those “in charge,” but both agreed to play key roles, with trust and hope for the plans’ eventual successes.
Above I hinted that Lily’s allusive relationship with Mary the Mother of God may have been intentional on the part of the author. Our best evidence of such intentionality regards Lily’s name. Because of the lily’s traditional associations with purity, it became associated with Mary, who is often depicted holding lilies of white. Ferguson notes the lilium candidum, or “Madonna lily,” is among the most recognized symbols of the Virgin mother in Christian art.[4] Another way Lily Potter alludes to Mary (intentionally or un-) is through her youth and relative insignificance; she is Muggle-born, and thus marginal and vulnerable, as Mary’s Judaism made her. And as discussed above, Lily’s Muggle-born status alludes to Mary in a particular way, for while Harry’s father James, like Joseph, has a noble heritage,[5] Harry’s mother Lily, like Mary, is of far humbler origins. Yet in her, magic bubbles forth unexpectedly and completely.
Lily’s Muggle-born status makes her only offspring, Harry, a meeting place between the magic and non-magic worlds, just as Jesus, for Christians, is the axis mundi, the meeting place between heaven and earth.[6] This is why we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary here in the midst of our preparations for Christmas – because Mary, like Lily, was born special, and her specialness shows us that an ordinary, lowly girl from humble origins, can, through graced cooperation with God’s plans, participate in the world’s redemption. Like Mary – and like Lily – we too are called to make self-emptying choices, hollowing ourselves out, as it were, putting aside our own ambitions and desires to make room for God’s plans. In celebrating the Immaculate Conception of Mary, we proclaim the possibility that through us, God can and will do “marvelous deeds.”[7]
[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 490; internal quotation is from Vatican Council II’s Lumen Gentium, para. 56.
[2] Luke 1:38, New American Bible Revised Edition.
[3] Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, XXII, 4 (180 A.D.).
[4] George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 95.
[5] That the Potters are descended from the Peverell family can be assumed by James’ possession of the Cloak Hallow.
[6] Lily is not simply born of Muggles, she’s born from the same Muggles who produced her sister, Petunia, whose name is allusive to a lily which, in some interpretations of Victorian floriography, invoked “anger and resentment.” (“Lily, Petunia and the Language of Flowers,” Wizarding World (formerly Pottermore), https://www.wizardingworld.com/features/lily-potter-petunia-and-the-language-of-flowers, accessed 6 November 2019.) One must admit Petunia and her Dursley family are the most Mugglish Muggles we meet in the series, and this makes Lily’s magical ability even more surprising. For more on magic in Potter as an extended metaphor for the (Christian) life of grace, see Emily Strand, “Harry Potter and the Sacramental Principle,” in Worship vol. 93 (Oct. 2019), 345-365.
[7] Psalm 98, NABRE translation.