Immaculate Human Nature

This year for me the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is so simple. The All-Holy, Most Pure, Ever-Virgin Mary signifies the fact that God created us not for sin and death but for righteousness and life. From what other substance could the Son of Man take his own flesh? She marks the turning point in the history of human nature back towards our Creator's original intent. In Mary, God straightens what Eve made crooked. She was graced with the same human nature that Eve possessed, no more and no less inclined towards sin; the same human nature that would serve as the only fitting abode for the Son of God. Sure, you can say Christ is more properly the turning point, but why be so hair-splittingly stingy? I think Catholics have done the dogma a disservice by spinning it as some freakishly unnatural miracle of galactic proportions. Human nature couldn't be more natural than the Immaculate Conception -- that's the point. Somewhere along the way, we implicated sin into human nature rather than into the human condition. Big difference.