Mary was not picked to be the Mother of our Savior when she was a young girl praying in the garden. She was chosen long before she was even born. Because of this, from the moment of her conception she was sinless.
Even though the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary’s conception and not Jesus’, it is more about Him than her.
She was conceived, not by the Holy Spirit like Jesus, but through the natural conjugal act of her parents, Joachim and Anne.
Mary’s Immaculate Conception was officially and solemnly declared a dogma in 1854 but has been a common belief since the beginning of Christianity.
The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated on December 8 and is a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics and patronal feastday of the United States of America.
If the Immaculate Conception falls on a Sunday, it is moved to Monday and the obligation to attend Mass that day is removed.
Even many Catholics are confused about the Immaculate Conception:
If you’re going to be the Mother of God, you need some help:
The most thoroughly redeemed person:
The “splendour of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 492
All of Mary’s goodness came from what God did in her life:
Mary was preserved from sin unlike us who are delivered from sin:
And he came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. “
Luke 1: 28-30
A reboot of the first Eve:
The New Eve is not tainted by the stain of Original Sin:
The celebration of the Immaculate Conception fits the season of Advent:
We can find hope in the Immaculate Conception:
From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, He would be born into this world. Above all creatures did God so love her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully.
Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854
The Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the Catholic Church:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Let us delight in the joy of the Gospel:
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