The Immaculate Conception

Today we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother. I remember when I was working, and a fellow worker commented on the immaculate conception of Jesus. Now, he was a man of thought, and I respected him a lot. However, when I told him that this day was for His Mother, he just stopped and stared at me. When I asked him that, if he were able to form his own mother, wouldn't he want her to be as perfect as possible? He answered in the affirmative. I said, 'So did Jesus', and the only way she could be as perfect as possible was to clear her from the taint of 'original sin' which we all have inherited. Since He was God, this could easily be done. I left him stroking his full beard as I had more work to do.

This is just such an awesome day in the Church's year, that words cannot fully understand or explain it satisfactorily. Our beloved abbot tells us in a better way than I can a sampling of this day, describing when Gabriel came in person to a mere human been.

'And how can we do less than admire and love the incomparable purity of Mary in her Immaculate Conception, when we hear even God, who thus prepared her to become His Mother, saying to her, in the divine Canticle(Canticles iv.7), these words of complacent love: 'Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee!' It is the God of all holiness that here speaks; that eye, which sees all things, finds not a vestige, not a shadow of sin; therefore does He delight in her, and admire in her that gift of His own condescending munificence. Wee cannot be surprised after this, that Gabriel, when he came down from heaven to announce the Incarnation to her, should be full of admiration at the sight of that purity, whose beginning was so glorious and whose progress was immeasurable; and that this blessed spirit should bow down profoundly before this young Maid of Nazareth, and salute her with, 'Hail, O full of grace!' And who is this Gabriel? An Archangel, that lives amidst the grandest magnificences of God's creation, amidst all the gorgeous riches of heaven; who is brother to the Cherubim and Seraphim, to the Thrones and Dominations; whose eye is accustomed to gaze on those nine angelic choirs with their dazzling brightness of countless degrees of light and grace; he has found on earth, in a creature of a nature below that of angels, the fulness of grace, of that grace which had been given to the angels measuredly. This fulness of grace was in Mary from the very first instant of her existence. She is the future Mother of God, and she was ever holy, ever pure, ever Immaculate.

May this wonderful Mother pray for us today and always, and deliver as many souls from purgatory today as possible. Amen!