A reflection from a brother in Christ that I wanted to share with you.
The serpent had tricked Eve into eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which
became the fall of Adam and Eve, when God gave His judgment upon them for sinfully disobeying
and eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Suffering and death, pain in childbirth, hard
toil in labor, and all that bad stuff. The Lord God banned it from all of the other animals and from
all the wild creatures. On its belly the serpent would crawl and dirt it would eat all the days of its
life. God put enmity between the serpent and the woman, between his offspring and hers. It would
strike at her heel but she would crush it's head!! This is
called the proto-Gospel: the promise of the woman and her seed who would crush the serpent's
head. Now the woman in the proto-Gospel God was speaking of wasn't Eve, who had just been
defeated by the serpent by listening to it and sinfully disobeying God, but God was speaking of a
woman in the future who would be free of the serpents venom (sin) and full of grace (God's life and
Spirit). God is sincere with the sincere but with the cunning He out does in cunning. In His infinite
wisdom God fore-planned the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mother and of His Son
made man in the future (the fullness of time). Because He is in eternity He is not bound by space
and time and all things are possible with Him. He was going to reach into the future to the
accomplishment of His Son's Paschal mystery (crucifixion, death and resurrection) for our salvation
and redemption and apply that grace to Mary's Immaculate soul as a little embryo in
St. Ann's womb. Mary's name means "full of grace" so that she could be the sinless Virgin Mother
of His Son. This is called her Immaculate Conception: her being conceived without sin. As a result
of this she was able to be full of grace (God's life), and the fruit of this is that her will would be
God's will perfectly. Even the humble supreme obedience unto death He would ask of His Son
made man, in reparation for Adam and Eves sinful disobedience they were to suffer the
consequences of sin (suffering and death) without having committed it (sin).
This is how Mary could crush the serpent's
head: her shared humble obedience unto death with her Son Jesus.
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