To summarise the question of a commenter on a previous year’s Godzdogz post on this feast, what’s the point of the Immaculate Conception? Isn’t it just another of those impossible things which Catholics, like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, have to believe before breakfast?
Well, first of all, we should make sure we’re clear what we’re talking about: far too often, people talk of the ‘immaculate conception’ when what they really mean is the Annunciation or the Virgin Birth – in other words, the conception and birth of Jesus without an earthly father. In fact, however, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is something completely different, teaching that Mary, uniquely among human beings since Adam and Eve (other than her Son), was free from sin from the first moment of conception. If it is an impossible thing, it’s an impossible thing that those who would deny original sin believe to be true of everyone!
What if we do accept the notion of original sin, though? What is the significance of Mary’s Immaculate Conception? Well, we must remember that the Immaculate Conception was not an isolated event, but the beginning of a life entirely without sin, a life entirely in accordance with God’s will. In saying that Mary was free from sin from the first moment of her conception, we are saying something about the primacy of God’s love over sin and death; that same love which we see revealed when the Son of God dies upon the Cross, we see too in its power to preserve the Mother of God completely from the stain of sin.The Incarnation of God’s Son is the way in which God restores us to his friendship, which we lost with the sin of the first human beings, and it is also the way in which he reveals that he has done this; the Immaculate Conception of Mary, in turn, is one way in which we see the difference ‘fullness of grace’ (cf. Lk 1: 28) makes – that grace which Jesus offers to us all. For we should not forget that, in defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Pius IX made it clear that it was ‘in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race’ (Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus) that Mary was conceived without sin. In this special grace of Mary’s, this complete freedom from sin for the whole of her life, we see something of what life will be like in heaven for all whom, through the merits of Christ, God calls his friends.
So no, the Immaculate Conception is not just another difficult dogma we have to believe as a sign of our obedient submission to the faith: rather, it presents us with one aspect of the amazing truth of the power of God’s providential love for the whole human race.
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