Yes or No
to Love? Beaulieu Feast Day 2025 Yes or No to
Love? Beaulieu Feast Day 2025 Yes or No to Love?
Beaulieu Feast Day 2025

Yes or No to Love? Beaulieu Feast Day 2025

In the nature versus nurture debate, philosophers and psychologists debate the degree to which we are determined primarily by our genes and innate qualities or formed by our upbringing, experiences and surrounding culture.  So much of who we are (eye colour, hair, blood type, later medical conditions) comes from the DNA we inherit from our forebears at conception.  We also inherit certain personality traits  (I have a high anger threshold - it takes a while for me to lose it, but it ain’t pretty when I do!  Patience and foul tempers are found on both sides of the family!)   Another thing that all human beings seem to have is free will.  Simplifying the debate somewhat, and the protests of hard determinists (who deny the existence of free will and see everything as determined by our genetics) notwithstanding, I am free to choose what I want to eat from a menu. Free will underpins the ability to choose to do good or bad and all that ensues from that (e.g. the rule of law).  Some find doing good easier than others, some find it harder (because of conditioning and DNA), but it’s a struggle for all of us at times.  The desire to do the wrong thing - the human inclination to sometimes choose bad - is called “original sin” in the Christian tradition.  This phrase recognises that the struggle to do good and avoid bad is within us ab origine = from our origins, from the very beginning of our existence, from our conception.  We are all marked, tainted or stained in our human nature by this tendency called original sin. Our free will is tainted, though not destroyed.

The Beaulieu School badge has the words Sine Macula on it.  That means ‘without stain’ or ‘without mark’, which is what the word “immaculate” means.  Our school was founded by the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, a group of Catholic religious sisters who honoured Mary, Jesus’ Mum.  Mary’s Mum and Dad, Jesus’ grandparents, were called Joachim and Anne, and when they had sex (lest anyone doubt Mary was conceived in the same way as the rest of us!) and Mary was conceived, she was protected from the very beginning of her existence from the normal human tendency to sin.  There was no sinful inclination, no “original sin” for her, no sin ab origine.  That is what we remember in Beaulieu’s Feast of the Immaculate Conception (celebrated on 8th December). So the Immaculate Conception is about the conception of Mary in Saint Anne’s womb (Jesus’ Granny Annie!), free from the stain, the usual human tendency to be sinful, that deep-seated human inclination to mess things up by the wrong choice.

Three decades ago, Disney gave us The Lion King (El Rey León when I first watched it with my infant daughter in Catalonia).  Disney did not expect us to believe, of course, that there was literally a little lion cub called Simba speaking English with an American (or Spanish!) accent and running around with a warthog and a meerkat.  It was a story full of meaning, but it was neither a historical nor a literally true story.  But a story may not be literally true and still be full of truth (or truths plural).  For example, when you mess your life up like Simba, you can still turn things around, get your life back on track and become who you are supposed to be (and often good friends who walk with you are catalysts for that happening). The Lion King is not true because it happened at some specific moment in the past, but because it has happened repeatedly throughout human history and continues to happen.  It is a story about the human condition!

There is something similar going on in the story we hear in the First Reading on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  In Catholic thinking, we are always invited to remember that the Bible is not one book, but 73 books inside one cover, all of them containing different literary genres! (This is a bit like how The Collected Works of Shakespeare are 37 plays, 160 sonnets and 5 books of poetry inside one cover.)  Some of the 73 biblical books are historical, full of real events that happened and narrated from a particular point of view; others are myths or sacred stories with a deeper meaning; others again are poetry books; some of them are letters, etc. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we are told a story from the first book of the Bible - Genesis - and are introduced to a couple called Adam and Eve.  They are not an actual historical couple and this event never actually happened in history thousands of years ago (just like the Lion King never happened). But the stuff in the story of Adam and Eve happens all the time in people’s lives and has been happening throughout human history (just like the stuff that happens in The Lion King happens all the time in real life).

In the story of Adam and Eve, we are told that a couple is placed into a perfect situation (Paradise) and they make a mess of it!  Typically human!  They refuse to do what they ought to do, going against God’s will, and complications follow as sure as night follows day.  Any organisation knows that non-compliance always leads to issues down the line!  Then, when God asks them why they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, instead of owning up, they both play the blame game - Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent that tempted them! (Yes, there’s a talking serpent - just as in Disney movies, talking animals are a sure sign we are not meant to take the story literally!)  Adam says, “She made me do it!” (How often do men blame their poor choices on factors at home?) and Eve gives us an early version of “The dog chewed up my homework!” Again, typically human.  Adam and Eve is not a true story because it happened thousands and thousands of years ago in history; it is a true story because it happens all the time in our world and in our own lives.  People don’t do the right thing, the loving thing, the honest thing, thinking it will make them happy, but it never does in the long run. Then they make excuses. How often do you think of someone who has messed up, “Why won’t they just admit it? Just say, ‘Busted!’” Cover-ups make things worse in the end. We see that happen again and again throughout history.  That’s why it’s a story in the Bible.

The antidote to this poison is found in the gospel we hear on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Mary of Nazareth agrees to do God’s will.  She doesn’t do an Adam and Eve - she says yes, not no, to God.  When asked if she will be mother to the Son of the Most High, she says yes - “I am God’s servant. Let what you have said be done to me.” Yep, I’m scared and confused, but yes.  And the rest is history. A tiny, unknown woman said yes to God and changed the world forever.  God has chosen us to play our part in the overall plan and by saying yes to that, yes to love, we will change history in little and big ways. Happy Feast Day, Beaulieu!