In 1998, the Church of Corpus Christi, in Limerick, Ireland, was destroyed by fire.

The fire started in an extension cable for the organ, and it was hot enough to melt the marble base of a wooden statue of Mary.

The plaster canopy over the statue was destroyed, but the statue survived, blackened and scorched, but intact.

The Limerick paper quoted the caretaker, who said, “I can’t understand how the statue of our Lady survived when everything around it went to pieces.”

When Adam and Eve fell, our human nature, burdened with the consequences of sin, “went to pieces.”

But Mary, from the first moment of her conception,

through a special intervention of God

because of the merits of Jesus

was preserved from original sin and

she was filled with grace.

She did not “go to pieces.”

Mary, according to our tradition, crushed the head of the serpent, the personification of sin, lurking at the door of faith. Satan’s urge is directed at Mary, at you, and at me, to sin.

You can overcome sin with the same grace given Mary.

Mary was tempted, you know. So was Jesus (Lent). But neither of them opened the door to sin.

God the Father chose us in Christ to be holy and without blemish before Him.

God has not changed His mind.

Like Mary, God wants you to be full of grace so that you can crush sin and not go to pieces.

But, like Mary, you can only do it with Jesus.

All that God has ever asked is that, in exchange for His love for you, you love Him in return and not change your mind and go to pieces.

Liturgically speaking, Advent is the beginning of being watchful, not the “you better watch out you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why ... .” Unless, of course, you mean that Jesus is coming to town, to your heart and you are open to him because you have been faithful to him.

This Advent is a good time to look at how you and God are making room for His grace to shape the way you are living each day so that you are really living a wonderful life.

St. Paul wrote, “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all so as to strengthen your hearts to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his holy ones. You know how to conduct yourselves in pleasing God: do so even more.”

You have all the graces of the season to not fall to pieces.