Seven Considerations on the Immaculate Conception

Many Catholics misunderstand today’s feast, which is also the patronal feast of our nation (the first country to claim her under this title).  They confuse the Immaculate Conception of Mary with the virginal conception of Jesus.  But today we celebrate the fact that Mary was sinless from the very first moment of her existence – which is extremely important because it demonstrates the care with which God guided the entire process of our salvation.

It’s no sheer accident that the Church celebrates this feast at the outset of Advent. This privilege accorded to Our Lady was part of the work of salvation begun at the very moment when sin itself first entered the world.  The experience of sin and its reign in our world came about because of human weakness and pride.  Just as a woman made possible the first sin, so too a woman would make possible the work of our salvation.  Mary was God’s answer to Eve.

Christians today and throughout the ages love Mary because she embodies, literally, all that we hope to be.  That is why Wordsworth could rhapsodize on her as “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”  By her faith and willingness to cooperate with God, Mary showed herself to be a true daughter of Abraham.  The humble maid of Nazareth further demonstrated that genuine liberation consists not in doing one’s own thing as much as it consists in doing God’s thing.  She proved the angel right, that the Lord was truly with her, as she pronounced that fearful but firm “yes” which reversed every previous “no” in history.

This solemnity gives us a golden opportunity to consider various theological dimensions of the Immaculate Conception.

First, original sin.  Original sin is not something we can grasp; it’s an absence of original holiness, grace, and unity with the Creator.  And it is an “inheritance” from our first parents.  Original sin is “hard-wired” into our nature. This caused St. Paul to muse about why we find it easier to do evil than to do good (cf.  Romans 7:19).

Second, original sin constitutes us as “children of wrath.” (Ephesians 2:3) It’s common to gaze upon an infant and declare, “What an angel!”  However, that is more a wish than a reality.  An infant is totally self-absorbed and demanding.  G.K. Chesterton called original sin “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”  Saint John Henry Newman identifies it as “some terrible aboriginal calamity.”

Third, baptism, which is necessary because it moves us from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light.  It returns us to the prelapsarian Garden of Eden.  Georges Bernanos, in a charming phrase, referred to Our Lady in her Immaculate Conception as “younger than sin.”  Baptism, we can say, then, is a Christian’s “fountain of youth” as it returns us to that state of original holiness, justice and grace.  Hence, Our Lord’s assertion to Nicodemus:  “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).

Fourth, we have to deal with a common Protestant objection to the Immaculate Conception, namely, that it “divinizes” Mary.  But several major Protestant Reformers believed in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception – four centuries before its dogmatic definition!  Similarly, Cardinal Newman, thirteen years before his conversion, could preach:

Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and divine favour go together (and this we are expressly told), what must have been the transcendent purity of her, whom the Creator Spirit condescended to overshadow with His miraculous presence? What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and stature?

Luther, Zwingli, and Newman never imagined that Mary became a goddess because of her Immaculate Conception – any more than Eve was goddess or Adam a god because they were created sinless.  Newman speaks of Mary as “the daughter of Eve-unfallen.”

Which leads logically to a fifth consideration: Was this dogma’s definition an “invention” of the Church in the nineteenth century?  Clearly not, for if the sixteenth-century Reformers and an Oxford don of the nineteenth century – let alone countless Fathers of the Church – believed this to be a truth of faith, we are face-to-face with something deeply ingrained in the Christian mind and heart.

Sixth, how was this privilege accorded the Blessed Virgin?  The pure and simple answer: grace.  It is fascinating to note that one of the primary Reformation principles was “sola gratia” (by grace alone).  The clearest, finest and most impressive application of that principle is Mary’s Immaculate Conception.

Seventh, it is logical to ask further how this could happen before the saving work of the world’s sole Redeemer.  Again, the dogmatic definition explains that this saving action on behalf of the Virgin Mary took place “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race.”  The fancy theological term for this is “prevenient grace,” heard in the Prayer over the Offerings of the day’s Mass; in simpler language, we can call it “preventive medicine.” That means that a future event and its merits were applied beforehand (for God exists in an eternal present), making the future Mother of the Redeemer an apt dwelling for Him.

In his usual, inimitable style, Saint John Henry connects the dots for us:

A war between a woman and the serpent is spoken of in Genesis. Who is the serpent? Scripture nowhere says till the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. There at last, for the first time, the “Serpent” is interpreted to mean the Evil Spirit. Now, how is he introduced? Why, by the vision again of a Woman, his enemy – and just as, in the first vision in Genesis, the Woman has a “seed,” so here a “Child.” Can we help saying, then, that the Woman is Mary in the third [chapter] of Genesis?

Today, then, we laud the one who is “younger than sin,” “the daughter of Eve-unfallen,” and “our tainted nature’s solitary boast” – proud to fulfill Mary’s Spirit-filled prophecy in her Magnificat: “Henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” (Luke 1:48)