IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF OUR BLESSED MOTHER

This Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Advent 3013. However, it is also December 8, the day we honor the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Mother of all believing Christians. It supercedes the normal celebration for the Sunday, no matter what those in charge say. They have abandoned the Faith that comes to us through Jesus Christ, and pronounced by His Apostles. This is the Faith we are to honor and cherish. They want to honor Mary on Monday, but is NOT a day of obligation. Like I said, they have left the ship struggling through the waves without someone competent enough to right it. Our Blessed Mother should be the navigator of the ship, to guide the pilot (the Pope). Just sayin'

In the book of Wisdom, we read: 'For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness.' Wis. vii, 26

She herself said that her soul magnifies the Lord, which, to me, means that if we look to her, we will see things more clearly. It is NOT that her being proclaiming the Lord, as it is said in the newer version of scripture. Those translations are WRONG! Protestants say that we should go directly to Jesus with our petitions. However, they seem to miss the fact, that if it hadn't been for Mary and her fiat, Christ would not have come in person, unless God had chosen someone else to do it. Granted, God can do whatever He wants, but He chose to come through Mary. Jesus even gave her to us as our Mother when He was on the Cross, when he told John, who was standing in the place of all true Christians, 'behold your mother.' All scripture in the newer bibles has been changed whenever it is about Mary. She is the 'Woman' in Genesis, and is the woman in the Apocalypse, Chapter 12. Scripture started with her, and ended with her. And, remember, even she said at Cana: "Do whatever He tells you to do."

I will now take some words from a book I have entitled 'Half-hours with the Servants of God', printed in 1891.

'That God should have willed that Mary's body should not be endowed with a more excellent purity than that of her soul, is not what could reasonably be expected of His wisdom, since the soul is the noblest part of man.

If the body, according to the expression of the Apostle, is a beautiful vase, the soul is the most precious of liquors which ought to fill it; and consequently the Virginal body of Mary, whose purity surpassed that of angels and near unto God, as St. Bernard says, had to contain a soul still more pure, inasmuch as the purity of the body,
without the purity of the soul, can have no value or consideration with God.' Le Pere Houdry, S.J.

There is something in Mary which moves and affects me much more than this privilege of having been exempt from original sin--something which adds additional lustre to this first prerogative. Mary received this grace from the very first moment of her conception; it was a wondrous gift; but what appears to me to be still more wonderful is that she kept this grace until the last moment of her life, as pure, as entire, as when she first received it--no sin, no imperfection, no weakness, no surprise, have ever done her harm.

It is a wonder to see water springing from the bosom of the earth as clear, as fresh, as if it fell from heaven; but it is a thing unheard of that this same water from the well, after having bedewed the fields and dirty places, should flow at last into the sea without a taint of smell, as unpolluted as when it issues from the spring.

This is, however, what our Blessed Lady has done. She lived in this valley of tears for more than sixty years--this, too, in the midst of the same sins and occasions of sins which corrupt daily even innocent souls--without ever losing the purity of her heart. Her humility and patience were put to proofs without a parallel, and she gained fresh lustre from every trial. The Holy Ghost gave her the preference among the many virgins without losing her honor; she had her joys, but she had her dolours too, and though these she never lost for a single moment the peace and tranquility of her soul.

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 have 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 asunder. Le Pere de la Colombiere, S.J.

I would like to include part of the sermon for this day, given by Archbishop LeFebvre in 1972:

'The influence of the Blessed Virgin Mary has not ceased. Even now in heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary continues to be the Mother of the Mystical Body of Our Lord, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of our souls. She shows it, she proves it, she proves it in every one of us, but she also proves it in her apparitions. Is it not admirable to think that after the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as a revealed truth, that the Blessed Virgin Mary was Immaculate from her Conception — already four years later on March 21, 1858, the Blessed Virgin herself said to little Bernadette, the little shepherdess, "I am the Immaculate Conception."

Remember that Bernadette was incapable of understanding, she could not understand what these words meant, and she left the grotto on her way to her pastor’s house repeating these words which she did not understand, to make sure she would not forget them. The history of the life of Bernadette tells us that it was at that moment that the parish priest of Lourdes, Fr. Pomian, was truly convinced by the apparitions at Lourdes. He realized that the poor little shepherdess was incapable of inventing this herself, and that the dogma had been proclaimed four years before by the Sovereign Pontiff. Thus it was confirmed by the Blessed Virgin herself that she was the Immaculate Conception.'

As men are conceived in sin, and we do not read of any one who was sanctified in his mother's womb excepting Jeremias and St. John the Baptist; although there is no doubt that the Blessed Virgin, enclosed in her mother's womb, should have been purified by a much more sublime degree of sanctification, seeing that she was to be the sanctuary where God the Son was to be made Flesh. St. Bernard

Let us, therefore, strive to hold onto the Eternal Truths of Christ's Church, no matter who tries to tell us different. Me.