Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

From the 1945 Marian Missal:

“I will put enmities between thee and the woman.” In these words the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was announced to our first parents. It was to be the reversal of the friendship with the serpent contracted by Eve, when she listened to his voice and fell under his power. The second Eve was never to be under the power of the devil; the enmity between them was to admit of no possible exception. This involved the grace of being conceived immaculate. Mary’s Immaculate Conception was the foundation of all her graces. The absence of any stain or spot of sin distinguished her from all the rest of mankind. It distinguished her from the holiest of the Saints, since they, one and all, were sinners. Her perfect sinlessness was the source of all her glory and all her majesty; it was this which opened the door to the unlimited graces that she received from God; it was this that qualified her for her divine maternity and raise her to her throne as Queen of Heaven.

O Queen conceived without original sin,
pray for us who have recourse to thee.

This feast was established for the universal Church by Pope Pius IX when he proclaimed that from all eternity, the Triune Divinity chose the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the tabernacle of the Son of God. The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception proclaimed once and for all that it was unthinkable that Mary be defiled in any way by sin in any manner whatsoever. Thus, in that infinitesimal second that God created Mary He made her Immaculate. This grace, like all other graces since Adam and Eve’s fall, was given to Mary through the merits of her Divine Son Jesus. She stood alone as one free of the stain of original sin, redeemed not from the evil already present at birth, but from any evil that threatened this sacred temple known as the Mother of God.

This was confirmed in the infallible words of Pius IX,

The most holy Virgin Mary was, in the first moment of her conception, by a unique gift of grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Redeemer of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin.

Saint Ephrem first held this belief in the fourth century. Seven centuries later the crusaders brought this belief back to the Western Church from the Eastern Church in the Holy Land where, since 750, it had been celebrated on December 9 along with the feast of Saint Anne who had conceived the Blessed Mother.

In 1050 a feast honoring Mary’s conception was offered by Pope Leo IX and advanced greatly by the holy Doctor of the Church Saint Anselm. In the twelfth century the Franciscan Father Duns Scotus defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and was listed in the Roman Calendar in the year 1476 by Pope Sixtus IV. In 1708 Pope Clement XI made the conception of Our Lady a feast of obligation. Nearly 150 years later in 1854, Pius IX proclaimed it the feast of the Immaculate Conception. This interestingly followed the lead of the United States Bishops eight years earlier who had decreed on May 13, 1846 that the U.S. was consecrated to Mary’s Immaculate Conception and assigned December 8 as the official feast of their Heavenly patron. His Holiness gave full approval to the American Bishops on February 7, 1847. Just over ten years later, and four years after Pius IX’s infallible pronouncement “Ineffabilis Deus,” Our Lady herself confirmed this dogma at Lourdes when she proclaimed to the visionary Saint Bernadette Soubirous, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

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