One page synopsis: Mary’s prophecy, given in her Magnificat,
“Behold all generations will call me blessed,” was fulfilled when the Catholic Church declared four dogmas of Faith about her: 1-The Immaculate Conception, 2-The Perpetual Virginity, 3-The Divine Maternity, 4-The Assumption. The Immaculate Conception is a dogma based mainly on Christian tradition and theological reasoning. It was defined in 1854 by Pope Pius IX as a dogma of Faith through Ineffabilis Deus.
Definition: From the first moment of her
conception, Mary was preserved immune from original sin by the singular grace
of God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race.
(CCC #491). This means that original sanctity, innocence and justice were
conferred upon her, and that she was exempted from all the evil effects of
original sin, excluding sorrow, pain, disease and death which are temporal
penalties given to Adam. (Catholic Encyclopedia).
Basis on Sacred Tradition and the Bible: (A) From
Church tradition: The Immaculate Conception is a dogma originating from
sound Christian tradition. Monks in Palestinian monasteries started celebrating
the feast of the Conception of Our Lady by the end of the 7th century. The
feast spread as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in Italy (9th century),
England (11th century), and France (12th century). Pope Leo VI propagated the
celebration, and Pope Sixtus IV approved it as a Feast. Finally, in 1854, Pope
Pius IX declared the Immaculate Conception to be a dogma of Faith. Mary herself
approved this in 1858 by declaring to Bernadette at Lourdes, “I am the
Immaculate Conception.” (B) From Holy Scripture: 1) God purified
the prophet Jeremiah in the womb of his mother (Jer 1:5 –“Before I formed
you in the womb of your mother I knew you and before you were born, I
consecrated you”), and anointed John the Baptist with His Holy Spirit
before John’s birth as John’s mother attests. (Lk 1:43-44 – “And how does
this happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the
moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped
for joy.” Hence, it is reasonable that God kept the mother of His Son
free from all sins from the first moment of her origin. 2) The angel saluted
Mary as “full of grace.” The greeting means that she was never, even for
a moment, a slave of sin and the devil. 3) Gn 3:15 — “I will put enmity
between you and the woman and between your seed and hers; He will strike at
your head while you strike at His heel.” The woman stands for Mary, and the
promise would not be true if Mary had original sin. (C)-Argument from
reason: 1-If we were allowed to select our mother, we would select the
most beautiful, healthy and saintly lady. So did God. 2-The All-Holy God cannot
be born from a woman who was a slave of the devil, even for a moment in her
life. “Deus potuit, decuit, fecit.” (Don Scotus).
Life messages: 1) Every mother wants
her children to inherit or acquire all her good qualities. Hence, our
Immaculate and holy Heavenly Mother wants us to be holy and pure
children. 2) Let us honor her by practicing her virtues of
Faith and obedience. 3) Let us respond to God’s grace by using it to do good to
others.
Homily starter anecdotes # 1: The favorite name
of explorers: In 1492, Columbus discovered America. He sailed in a ship
called Santa Maria de Conceptio (St. Mary of the Conception).
He named the first Island he landed San Salvador, in honor of
our Savior. Columbus named the second island Conceptio in
honor of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. The fearless French explorer Fr.
Marquette who explored the 2300-mile length of the Mississippi River flowing
through ten states, called it River of Mary Immaculate. In fact,
all the early American Catholics were so proud of the great truth we celebrate
today that the American bishops in 1829 (25 years before the promulgation of
the dogma, and the year before the Blessed Mother gave St. Catherine Laboure
the design for the Miraculous Medal), chose Mary Conceived Without Sin
as the patroness of the United States. Hence, in the U.S., this Holy Day is the
feast of the country’s Heavenly patroness.
# 2:” I am the Immaculate Conception.” Four
years after the Church formally defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Bernadette Soubirous experienced
the first of her apparitions of the Blessed Mother at Lourdes. She was only
fourteen years old at the time, and in the French society of that day, the
reality that her family was very poor meant that she had no social standing. So
when she tried to explain that she was having visions of a beautiful Lady in
what we know today as the Grotto at Lourdes, no one believed her. At first not
even her parish priest gave any credence to what she was saying. It wasn’t
until the Lady that she was seeing identified herself, and Bernadette shared
this, that people began to wonder if there were a whole lot more to the story.
The Lady in the Grotto did not identify herself simply as Mary. Instead, she
identified herself with words that a Pyrenean peasant girl with little
theological education at the time would not have known or understood: “I am the
Immaculate Conception.”
# 3: Bishop Sheen on Immaculate Conception: “Just
suppose that you could have pre-existed your own mother, in much the same way
that an artist pre-exists his painting. Furthermore, suppose that you had the
infinite power to make your mother anything that you pleased, just as a great
artist like Raphael has the power of realizing his artistic ideas. Suppose you
had this double power, what kind of mother would you have made for yourself?
Would you not have made her, so far as human beauty goes, the most beautiful
woman in the world; and so far as beauty of the soul goes, one who would
radiate every virtue, every manner of kindness and charity and loveliness; one
who by the purity of her life and her mind and her heart would be an
inspiration not only to you but even to your fellow men, so that all would look
up to her as the very incarnation of what is best in motherhood? Do you think
that our Blessed Lord, who not only pre-existed His own mother but Who had an
infinite power to make her just what He chose, would in virtue of all the
infinite delicacy of His spirit make her any less pure and loving and beautiful
than you would have made your own mother?
# 4: St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Immaculate Conception:
St Maximilian Kolbe founded the Militia Immaculata in 1917
with six of his fellow- seminarians. “Its goal was nothing less that to bring
the whole world to God through Christ under the generalship of Mary Immaculate,
and to do so as quickly as possible. Fulfilling this mission through obedience
to God’s will, in union with Mary Immaculate, was Kobe’s entire concern, his
pure intention — and he sacrificed everything for its accomplishment” [Michael
Gaitley MIC, 33 Days to Morning Glory (Stockbridge
Massachusetts:
Marian Press, 2015), p. 50.] “In Poland, Kolbe … founded the
world’s largest Franciscan monastery, which he named Niepokolanow (“City
of the Immaculate”), and he continually urged the more than 600 friars there to
become soldier saints for God under Mary Immaculate … because among creatures,
she alone does the will of God perfectly. Therefore, when our wills are united
with hers, they’re necessarily united to God’s will” (Gaitley, p. 57). Then,
“in 1941, after decades of incredibly fruitful apostolic labors in Poland and
Japan, Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz
concentration camp. Before his arrest, his brother Franciscans had pleaded with
him to go into hiding. He said he was grateful for their loving hearts but
couldn’t follow their advice. Later, he explained why: ‘I have a mission — the
Immaculata has a mission to fulfill.’” In the concentration camp where Kolbe
was imprisoned, one of the prisoners managed to escape. In retaliation and as a
deterrent to the rest of the prisoners, ten members were chosen at random by
the prison authorities and told to step forward for execution. One man chosen
wept and pleaded to be spared because he and his wife had small children. Kolbe
stepped forward, asked to take this man’s place, and was accepted. The ten were
imprisoned in a bunker to starve to death. In that bunker, Kolbe brought
comfort to the others, Finally, after two weeks, the captors executed him with
a lethal injection — on August 14, 1941, the day before the Feast of the
Assumption of Mary, his beloved Immaculata.
Introduction: Mary’s prophecy, given in
her Magnificat, “Behold all generations will call me
blessed,” was fulfilled when the Catholic Church declared four dogmas
of Faith about her: 1-Her Immaculate Conception, 2- Her Perpetual Virginity, 3-
Her Divine Maternity, and 4- Her Assumption into Heaven after her death. The
Immaculate Conception is a dogma based mainly on Christian tradition and
theological reasoning. While other human beings were born without grace because
we inherit original sin, Mary was conceived full of grace, completely free from
original sin. The tradition was defined as Church dogma in 1854 by Pope Pius IX
through Ineffabilis Deus: “From the first moment of her
conception, Mary was preserved immune from original sin by the singular grace
of God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, savior of the human race.”
(CCC #491). This declaration means that original sanctity, innocence and
justice were conferred upon her, and that she was exempted from the evil
effects of original sin, excluding sorrow, pain, disease and death, the
temporal penalties given to Adam (Catholic Encyclopedia). “God freely
chose Mary from all eternity to be the Mother of his Son. In order to carry out
her mission, she herself was conceived Immaculate. This means that, thanks to
the grace of God and in anticipation of the merits of Jesus Christ, Mary was
preserved from original sin from the first instant of her conception.”
(Compendium of the CCC). The Fathers of the Church from the fourth century
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 kept company with the other beliefs about Mary: her
perpetual virginity, her sinlessness, and her Divine motherhood. Church history
makes known to us that, as early as the seventh century, there was a liturgical
observance that proclaimed the Blessed Virgin Mary to be free from sin. In the
year 1846, the Bishops of the United States unanimously chose Our Lady as the
patroness of the United States under the title of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.
This was done eight years before the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the
Blessed Virgin Mary was infallibly defined.
Basis in Scripture and Tradition: (A)Evidence
from Church tradition: The Immaculate Conception is a dogma
originating from sound Christian tradition. Monks in Palestinian monasteries
started celebrating the “Feast of the Conception of Our Lady” by the end
of 7th century. The feast spread as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in
Italy (9th century), England (11th century), and France (12th century). Pope
Leo VI propagated the celebration, and Pope Sixtus IV approved it as a Feast.
Finally, in 1854, Pope Pius IX declared the Immaculate Conception to be a dogma
of Faith. Mary herself approved this four years later (1858), by declaring to
Bernadette at Lourdes: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
(B) Evidence from Holy Scripture: 1- God
purified the prophet Jeremiah in the womb of his mother (Jer 1:5 —“Before I
formed you in the womb of your mother, I knew you, and before you were born, I
consecrated you”). God anointed John the Baptist with His Holy Spirit
before John’s birth, as John’s mother attests. (Lk 1:44 – “And how does this
happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment
the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for
joy.”). Hence, it is reasonable that God kept the mother of His Son free
from all sin from the first moment of her origin.
2- The angel saluted Mary as “full of grace”. This greeting
means that she was never, even for a moment, a slave of sin and the devil. In
the words of Lumen Gentium (56), Mary was “filled
with an entirely unique holiness,”
3- Gn 3:15 — “I will put enmity between you and the
woman and between your seed and hers; He will strike at your head while you
strike at His heel.” The woman stands for Mary, and the promise would not
be true if Mary had original sin.
(C)-Argument from reason: 1-If we were allowed to
select our mother, we would select the most beautiful, healthy and saintly
lady. That’s what God did. 2- The All-Holy God cannot be born from a woman who
was a slave of the devil, even for a moment in her life. Deus potuit (God
could do it), decuit (found fitting to do it), fecit.” (and
hence did it). [Duns Scotus]. How was Mary immaculately conceived? Theologians
explain it by “prevenient grace,” the grace that, praevenit, comes
before. That is, the merits of Christ’s saving life, death and Resurrection
were applied to the Blessed Virgin Mary in advance of the actual events in
history. Of course, as you know, with God there is no past, present or future.
He lives in an eternal now. And so, in virtue of Mary’s future role as “the
Mother of the Redeemer,” she was in fact redeemed in advance – in advance
only from a human perspective, not from God’s. It is like giving a “preventive
medicine.” You and I, and the rest of humanity, inherit original sin and its
effects, and we have to submit afterwards to the medicine, which is called
Baptism. God did something better for His Son’s Mother – she never had to
suffer the deficiency, to begin with. When Cardinal Newman [St. John Henry
Newman; canonized 2019] was trying to help Protestants understand who Mary as
“the Immaculate One” is, he came up with a very clever title for Mary. He
referred to her as “the daughter of Eve un-fallen.” You and I are the sons and
daughters of Eve in her fallen state. Mary is the daughter of grace Eve would
have been, had she not sinned.
Life messages: 1) We need to be pure and holy
like our Heavenly Mother. Every mother wants her children to inherit or acquire
all her good qualities. Hence, our Immaculate and holy mother wants us to be
holy and pure children. The original sin from which Mary was preserved is the
original sin from which we have been freed by Baptism. The grace of Christ that
was hers is the same grace of Christ that is ours. Mary is significant for us
because the central factors in her life are the central factors in our own. Perhaps
the lesson is that, no matter in which direction we may be facing, we need Mary
Immaculate in our lives in order to remember Who Christ IS and who we ourselves
are.
2) We need to be thankful and humble. Mary’s sinlessness was
a gift from God, given to her right from the very moment of her conception.
Equally, it is by the grace of God that we have received a new heart, a new
spirit and the indwelling Holy Spirit to raise us to the level of holiness that
the Blessed Virgin Mary enjoyed during her earthly life. Through Faith in Jesus
and through the Sacrament of Baptism, having been born again of water and
Spirit, we have been adopted into the Body of Christ in the living Hope of
receiving our salvation. Through our living Faith, including the reception of
the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God restores the righteousness of our souls.
Through the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, we abide in Jesus and Jesus in us,
this leading us towards our salvation. [Jn 6:56]. Hence, those of us who happen
to be holy, who sin less than the average sinner, should regard their holiness
as basically a gift of God and not something they have achieved by themselves.
Our lives, then, should be characterized by two basic attitudes, thankfulness
to God, and humility before those who are naturally and spiritually
less-gifted, or more-gifted, than we are.
3) Like Mary, we need to say “’Yes” to God: God invites each
one of us to continue Mary’s “Yes” by welcoming Jesus and making room for him
in our lives. Let us ask her to obtain for us the grace to respond as
generously to God’s call as she did, and to be as faithful in discipleship to
her Son as she was. On this feast day, let us ask our Mother Mary to be with
us, to guide us, to protect us through her prayers of intercession with her
Son, and to share her privilege with us, making our bodies worthy resting
places for her Son. Let us respond to God’s grace as Mary did, by using it to
do good for others and to avoid evil. On this Feast of the Immaculate
Conception, it is fitting that we remember the words of the intercessory prayer
that is inscribed on the Miraculous Medal of Our Lady:
“O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”
****
We are taught about Mary, highly favored by God and blessed
among women. Christian tradition sees in the greeting of the angel and Mary's
unique destiny that she was given grace in a special measure and united with
God in such a way that she is "full of grace," hence sinless from the
moment of her conception:
Parents who are open to the demands of family life are truly
free. Ministers of the Word, both clerical and lay, who allow Cod to make
demands on them know about freedom. Single people who meet the needs of others
in their walk of life strike a blow for freedom. Leaders who respond to the
cries of the poor and neglected demonstrate the meaning of freedom. All such
people are hearers of Cod's Word and thereby announce that freedom means
openness to God's Word.
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Prayer: God our Father, we thank you for choosing Mary as the Mother of your Son and for preserving her from all sin from the first moment of her life. Let this sign of your boundless love give us hope and strength to overcome evil in all its forms. May we respond to your loving goodness with the eagerness of Mary, by the power of the grace won for us through Jesus Christ our Lord. R/ Amen.
