Immaculate Conception

Today is, to me at least, the most awesome of all that God has done. Words can't possibly justify and capture the splendor and magnificence of it all. I shall try, in my own little way, to share with you, my feelings. And I will be using my book from 1891, as well as my 'Liturgical Year' book from 1923.

Pope Benedict XIV ( 1740-1758) quoted from someone named Frassen, a Scotist (from John Duns Scotus) theologian, when he distinguishes between an active and and passive conception.
The former consists in the act of the parents which causes the body of the child to be formed and organized, and so prepared for the reception of the rational soul which is infused by God. The latter takes place at the moment when the rational soul is actually infused into the body by God. It is the passive, not the active, conception which Catholics have in view when they speak of the Immaculate Conception. For there was nothing miraculous in Mary's generation. She was begotten like other children. The body, while still inanimate, could not be sanctified or preserved from original sin, for it is the soul, not the body, which is capable of receiving either the gifts of grace or the stain of sin. Moreover, from the fact that Mary sprang in the common way from Adam, our first father, it follows that she was the daughter of a fallen race and incurred the "debt" or liability to contract original sin. Adam was the representative of the human race: he was put on his trial, and when he fell all his descendants fell with him, and must, unless some special mercy of God interposed, receive souls destitute of that grace in which Adam himself was created. In Mary's case, however, God's mercy did interpose. For the sake of Him who was to be born of her and for "His merits foreseen," grace was poured into her soul at the first instant of its being. Christian children are sanctioned at the font: St. John the Baptist was sanctified while still unborn. Mary was sanctified earlier still--in the first moment of her conception...He Who redeemed us redeemed her. He Who sanctified us sanctified her in her conception...Sin was a physical impossibility in the human soul of Christ, because it was hypostatically united to the Divinity. Mary, on the other hand, was sinless by the grace of God.

In another part of the book, is as follows: In this mystery it seems to me to be fitting and proper to apply those words of the prophet in Wisdom (vii,26), "The unspotted mirror of God's majesty", to our Lady's Immaculate Conception. These words have been applied to the Uncreated Wisdom, that is to say, to the Word Incarnate, who is the substantial image of His Father and the mirror of His divine perfections, because He is begotten in a splendor more pure and brilliant than the light. They, however, can be applied in a just proportion to the glorious Virgin, since Mary was conceived without sin, exempt from its original stain, destined to be the Mother of a Son Who is as far removed from sin as light is from darkness; consequently, Mary can be rightly called an unspotted mirror. Her conception also corresponds with the eternal and temporal conception of that God-man Who is to be her Son, and also represents perfectly the sanctity, purity, majesty, and the noblest attributes of God Himself.

"Let us contrast ourselves with this holy and immaculate Mother. She received grace with life, and, what is more glorious still, she kept it intact until she died. And we, alas! have been conceived and brought into the world in sin; and we have received the grace of the Sacrament of Baptism which made us friends of God.

But, what is more lamentable, we lose the benefit of this grace almost as soon as we received it, and then pass the remainder of our days in the dread uncertainty of forgiveness. For it must be confessed. to our shame, that we, for the most part, remain in a state of grace so long as we are unacquainted with sin. It seems to me that there may be a contradiction between innocence and reason, and that they may clash together unless they are kept apart." LE PERE DE LA COLOMBIERE, S.J.

I had a discussion with one of my coworkers one day after he mentioned Jesus's immaculate conception. Now he was a United Brethren minister, but he at least would listen to reason. I asked him that, if he could put together his own mother, wouldn't he want her to be as perfect as possible? He answered in the affirmative. I told him that Jesus did too, and that the Immaculate Conception was for her, because Jesus didn't need it since He was God. It seemed to make sense to him. May God rest his soul. And this does make perfect sense. Nobody tells God what He can or cannot do! If He chose to do this, then so be it!

She is the new Ark of the covenant, the moon that gets it light from the Sun, the mirror which reflects her Son's image, the sacred vessel which contained the sacred Body of our Lord, and so on. If we'd quit trying to put limits on what God can do, maybe we could come to the truth in a fuller sense.

I will finish with some words from St. Anselm, a holy Doctor of the Church, "...it was just that this holy Virgin should be adorned with the greatest purity which can be conceived after that of God Himself, since God the Father was to give to her, as her Child, that only-begotten Son, whom He loved as Himself, as being begotten to Him from His own bosom; and this in such a manner, that the selfsame Son of God was, by nature, the Son of both God the Father and this blessed Virgin. This same Son chose her to be substantially His Mother; and the Holy Ghost willed that in her womb He would operate the conception and birth of Him from whom He Himself proceeded."