Inge Loots is a podcaster and blogger in the Netherlands who has become quite involved in the online community of SQPN enthusiasts. She shares everyday observations, recipes, and linux and mac tips at taquoriaan.com. For over a year, she has been podcasting the Liturgy of the Hours in Dutch.  She has been podcasting about her spiritual journey to the Catholic Church on A Journey into the Land of the Spirit. Last   year on December 6, Inge prepared a video slideshow for the Feast of St. Nicholas.  Today Inge brings us a blog post on The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady.

During Advent, everything is dialing back: there are no flowers in our churches, the Gloria is omitted during Mass and the colour is purple. The church is preparing for Christ’s coming with Christmas. We sing Veni, Veni, Immanuel and the Rorate Caeli only during this season. But on Dec. 8 the colour gets bright, the church flares up: it is the Solemnity of The Immaculate Conception. There’s a reason that this Solemnity is on the calendar at the beginning of Advent. It helps us to understand the coming of Christ better. It really helps preparing for Christmas. A lot of Catholics think, because we are preparing for Christ’s birth, this feast is reffering to the Immaculate Conception of Jesus, when the virgin Mary became pregnant of the Holy Spirit. This is not the case. We celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, also called in the Bible the second Eve. From Catholics to Protestants the general agreement is that Genesis 3:15 refers to the Blessed Virgin giving birth to the one who would crush the snake’s head.

The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you abouve all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will but enmity between you and the woman,and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

(Genesis 3:14-15)

There is a lot of confusion about the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. A lot of people think that ‘conception’ refers to the actual conception of the virgin Mary in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. But that’s not what the church teaches. I refer back to the links at the bottom of this post for more details. What is being meant is the infusion of the soul in the body when it is conceived in the womb, according to Catholic Encyclopedia:

The subject of this immunity from original sin is the person of Mary at the moment of the creation of her soul and its infusion into her body. The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body. Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul.

This is why the angel Gabriël says this to her, when he brings the message of God: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” Mary is full of grace, which is in Greek “kecharitomene”. The tense that’s being used in Luke 1:28 suggests that it is a permanent state. In other words, Mary is full of grace and always has been. Our word “charity” comes from the same root. When we continue reading in Luke 1:41-42, it says “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”” In Semetic languags (like Hebrew, Aramaic) “among women” means the highest in a group. So what Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says here is “You are more favoured (or graced) than all other women (because she was carrying our Saviour). This means, she is more graced than even Eve. She is like the second Eve, in the same way Jesus is called the second Adam elsewhere in Scripture.

In other words, it’s not true that our doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is not to be found in Scripture. It clearly is in the same way as other doctrines are found there, like the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Hypostatic Union, adopted by all orthodox Christian, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. Scripture doesn’t speak about “the Trinity” or about an “Hypostatic Union”, but both doctrines are considered to be Scriptural because it’s written in such a way it testifies from the Trinity, for example. In the same way you can see in the Scripture verses I just quoted that Scripture also testifies from the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. Yet it was only in 1854 that the doctrine was made a formal doctrine. The reason for this lies partly in scientific progress in medicine that was being made. Because scientists found out that the woman does not play a passive role in reproduction (as was previously thought), this discovery helped the Church to understand Mary’s role better.

I already quoted Catholic Encyclopedia before, to show what the doctrine teaches, but let me make clear what is NOT meant. The fact that Mary was conceived immaculate, doesn’t mean she was of virgin birth. That’s not what the Church teaches. It also doesn’t mean that Mary didn’t need a Saviour. The Church also doesn’t teach that. In Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX affirmed that Mary was redeemed in a manner more sublime. He stated that Mary, rather than being cleansed after sin, was completely prevented from contracting Original Sin in view of the foreseen merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race. This means, that theoretically she could have sinned, but she did not because God’s grace was protecting her against sinning, in order to prepare her to be a worthy mother to Our Saviour.

The feast day of the Immaculate Conception is on December 8, nine months before the feast of Mary’s birth on September 8. In the same way the feast of Jesus’ conception (The Visitation) at March 25 is nine months before the feast of Jesus’ birth (Christmas), December 25. The reason that Christmas is on December 25 has nothing to do with the Winter Solstice (for which December 25 would be the wrong date anyway), but to the mere fact that it’s nine months after the date on which we celebrate the Visitation.

I hope this blog post was helpful in understanding more about this Solemnity, in many parts of the world a Holy Day of Obligation, so go to Mass today if you can. And I hope it helps to appreciate our Blessed Virgin more.

Links:

Join us tomorrow and every day until December 26 for more reflections produced by great Catholic New Media personalities.

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