Immaculate Conception Of B V Mary

(December 5, 2009) On the 8^th of December we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This feast is a special feast of the church to extol the greatness of Mary who is conceived without sin and whose virtues of a pure and simple life we Christians aim to imitate. The Immaculate Conception is, according to Roman Catholic teaching, the conception of the Virgin Mary without any stain of original sin. The dogma says that, from the first moment of her existence, she was preserved by God from the lack of sanctifying grace that afflicts mankind, and that she was instead filled with divine grace. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception holds that Mary is the one fully human being preserved from original sin because she is the Mother of God. Grace intervened at the very instant in which her life began, preventing sin from touching her in any way, and so making her holy and immaculate from the moment of her conception. This made her worthy, and suggests that she was divinely chosen, to be the Mother of God. Christ preserved Mary from sin because she was his Mother. Its origin of the doctrine can be traced to the 4^th century, when theologians believed and taught that the Blessed Virgin Mary had been kept free of all traces of sin by the grace of God because she was to become the Mother of the Lord Jesus. This belief coexisted with the perpetual virginity of Mary, her sinless state, and her Divine motherhood. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, in its oldest form, goes back to the seventh century, when churches in the East began celebrating the Feast of the Conception of Saint Anne.
In the eighth century the feast came to the West and it became a feast of the Roman Catholic Church. It is the only one of Mary's feasts that came to the Western Church not by way of Rome, but instead spread from the Byzantine area to Naples, and then to Normandy during their period of dominance over southern Italy. From there it spread into England, France, Germany, and eventually Rome. Prior to Pope Pius IX's definition of the Immaculate Conception as Church dogma in 1854, most missals referred to it as the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The festal texts of this period focused more on the action of her conception than on the theological question of her preservation from original sin. A missal published in England in 1806 indicates the same collect for the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was used for this feast as well. Only after the eleventh century that Mary is called the immaculate one. Pope Sixtus IV in the fifteenth century while promoting the festival explicitly described it as the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1476, to be celebrated on the 8^th of December. Later the same title was endorsed by the Council of Trent. Centuries later, after consulting with all the Bishops of the world, Pope Pius IX pronounced and defined the dogma the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1854, he made the infallible statement Ineffabilis Deus: "The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."
In simple terms, this dogma proclaims that: first and foremost the entire being of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her physical and spiritual natures, were created by God Himself at her conception; and, second, she who was to become the tabernacle of the incarnation, was never subject to original sin, but was completely preserved from all the effects of the sin of Adam. In other words, the whole being of the Blessed Virgin Mary was created by God immaculate in nature. Mary was the only new and second Eve who was created in an immaculate state which was equal to the state of holiness that the first Eve enjoyed prior to her having disobeyed the Lord God in the Garden of Eden. The Book of Genesis tells us that God created the first woman who was called Eve. She enjoyed the divine blessing along with Adam which was a conditional gift from God. This conditional gift of God is similar to someone indefinitely granting to them and their posterity an opportunity to be with God totally. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and lost the original state of holiness and justice that they enjoyed. Mary the Immaculate person is now called upon to restore that grace to the humanity.
The dogma was defined in accordance with the conditions of papal infallibility, which would be defined in 1870 by the First Vatican Council. The papal definition of the dogma declares with absolute certainty and authority that Mary possessed sanctifying grace from the first instant of her existence and was free from the lack of grace caused by the original sin at the beginning of human history. Mary's salvation was won by her son Jesus Christ through his passion, death, and resurrection and was not due to her own merits. For the Roman Catholic Church the dogma of the Immaculate Conception gained additional significance from the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1858. At Lourdes a 14-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, claimed a beautiful lady appeared to her. The lady said, "I am the Immaculate Conception", and the faithful believe her to be the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Immaculate Conception is often misunderstood as referring not to Mary’s conception but to the virginal conception of Jesus. Though it is possible to indicate important stages in the development of the doctrine, it is not easy to grasp the internal dynamic of the progression from the New Testament, which is silent about Mary’s conception, to the dogmatic definition. The early dogmas of Mary’s virginity and divine motherhood were Christological that is to say that they made statements about Mary in order to preserve truths about Christ. The modern dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Assumption more directly envisage Mary. At one level they can be seen as privileges and gifts to Mary, to the woman who is Mother of Jesus who is God and man. This doctrine teaches us about our end, about the triumphant grace of Christ which overcomes sin leads to final glory. However, the most fundamental thing to say about the Immaculate Conception is the assertion that Mary was redeemed: in this world where sin reigns, she was conceived sinless, that is, she was redeemed by the merits of her Son. Jesus died for all on Calvary. We must thus say that he earned on the cross the grace of his Mother’s Immaculate Conception. All Christian theologians will agree that salvation is a free gift of God. The infant is sanctified by baptism; the adult accepts God’s gift of justifying grace through faith. When we say that Mary was immaculately conceived we state that she was redeemed in the most perfect possible way; sin was prevented from touching her. The gift of God is pure grace, the most perfect example of “grace alone”. She did nothing to merit or to acquire this grace: it is totally gratuitous. Later at the Annunciation she would respond in faith to God’s gift. We can therefore see why this gift is so dear to Mary, why at Lourdes she gave her name in the words: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
In the Immaculate Conception we can see the redemption fully at work. We can say that through this gift Mary is the fully healed one: she never had the spiritual flaws that hold us back from total love of God. Thus the Immaculate Conception allowed Mary’s yes at the Annunciation to be limitless, without any unconscious restriction. In several places the liturgy speaks of Mary as the beginning of the Church. She is also where the grace of redemption reaches its highest expression. Already in the Immaculate Conception the Church begins to exist “with no speck or wrinkle…but holy and faultless”(Eph 5:27). What the whole church will one day become is already perfect in Mary through her Immaculate Conception and Assumption. These are consoling mysteries since they are the real pledge and guarantee that God’s grace is more powerful than our guilt. So the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin reveals that God loves humanity as such. The Immaculate Conception also means that God surrounds this life of humanity with loving fidelity. Most Church Fathers agreed that Mary was sinless at the time she gave birth to Christ. They disagreed as to whether Mary was made sinless at conception, birth, or when she said "yes" to God's call. Even some prominent medieval Western theologians like St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas denied Mary's Immaculate Conception, although did not deny that she was sinless. The debate is not about Mary being sinless, but about when Mary was made sinless.
When discussing the Immaculate Conception, an implicit reference may be found in the angel’s greeting to Mary. The angel Gabriel said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you". The phrase "full of grace" therefore expresses a characteristic quality of Mary. The traditional translation, "full of grace," is better than the one found in many recent versions of the New Testament, which give something along the lines of "highly favoured daughter." Mary was indeed a highly favoured daughter of God. Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present. So, the grace Mary enjoyed was not a result of the angel’s visit. In fact, Catholics hold, it extended over the whole of her life, from conception onward. She was in a state of sanctifying grace from the first moment of her existence and she remained faithful and immaculate to God to the end of her earthly life. Through the Immaculate Conception of Mary who fully cooperated with the Divine Plan of God, we are led to Jesus. The glorious Feast of the Immaculate Conception is a reminder that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the new Eve, our spiritual Mother, she who has become co-redeemer with Christ in our salvation by allowing her womb to become the humble instrument and Sacred Temple of the Living God.
Orthodox Christians believe that Mary was without sin for her entire life, but they generally do not share the Augustinian and Medieval Roman Catholic Church's views on original sin. They note that St. Augustine, whose works were not well known in Eastern Christianity until after the 17th century, has exerted considerable influence over the theology of sin that has generally taken root in the Latin Rite. However, Augustine's theory that Original Sin is propagated by the concupiscence of reproduction and that it can be expressed in terms of stain and quasi-personal guilt is not shared by Eastern Orthodoxy. However, nor are these the terms that dogmatic pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church use to define original sin, and an examination of Roman Catholic dogma - as opposed to theological opinion - actually shows significant agreement, as original sin is defined as a privation of the original justice and sanctifying grace which was enjoyed in Eden. Some Eastern Orthodox theologians suggest that the references among the Greek and Syrian Fathers to Mary's purity and that she was sinless may refer not to an a priori state, but to her conduct after she was born. However, Eastern Christianity tends to focus on the fact that the main consequence of sin is the distortion of the nature of this world.
The problem with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is that it is not taught in the Bible. The Bible nowhere describes Mary as anything but a simple and ordinary human person whom God chose to be the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary was undoubtedly a godly woman. Mary was surely a wonderful wife and mother. Jesus definitely loved and cherished His mother. The Bible gives us no reason to believe that Mary was sinless. In fact, the Bible gives us every reason to believe that Jesus Christ is the only Person who was not “infected” by sin and never committed a sin. But the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception originated out of confusion over how Jesus Christ could be born sinless if He was conceived inside of a sinful human female. The thought was that Jesus would have inherited a sinful nature from Mary had she been a sinner. In contrast to the Immaculate Conception, the Biblical solution to this problem understands that Jesus Himself was miraculously protected from sin while He was in Mary's womb. The Roman Catholic Church argues that the Immaculate Conception is necessary because without it, Jesus would have been the object of His own grace. The word grace means “unmerited favour.” Grace is giving someone something he or she does not deserve. God performing a miracle in preserving Jesus from sin is not “grace.” Therefore in no sense could Jesus possibly be infected with sin. The feast of the Immaculate Conception is a sign of the triumph of the Universal Church which is manifested in Mary. In her the redemptive work of God is fulfilled. She becomes an example for us and she tells us that what happened to her will happen to us too.