The Immaculate Conception [Catholic Caucus open to invitation]

The great Auschwitz martyr, St. Maximilian Kolbe (d. 1941), during the 1920’s, translated from the original French into Polish the official depositions given to both state and Church officials by Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary of Lourdes, France. Between the dates of February 11th and July 16th, 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette claimed to have seen, a total of eighteen times, “a lady wearing a lovely white dress with a bright belt” who had on each of her feet “a pale yellow rose, the same color as her rosary beads.”

Following strict investigations, these sightings were approved by the Church as apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They were judged “worthy of belief,” in part, no doubt, because of the fruits they effected. Among these were a miraculous spring-turned-pool and the fact that some 200,000 faithful pilgrims had flocked to Massabielle (the sight of the apparitions by the River Gave) within the first month. But of all the events surrounding these apparitions, the most striking involves the self-identification of “the Lady” to Bernadette during the apparition of March 25. It was during this apparition that the Lady told the teenage peasant girl in her native French dialect: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It is this same revelation that St. Maximilian Kolbe so effectively reproduces for us from his own writings in The Knight of the Immaculate, the bulletin of the Militia of Mary Immaculate, an organization which he had founded to spread Marian devotion throughout Europe and Japan.

St. Maximilian Kolbe tells us that on March 25, Bernadette was instructed by her parish priest to ask the Lady who she was. Bernadette posed the question to the heavenly apparition twice, and each time the Lady only gazed upon her, silently, with a faint smile. It was at the third posing of this question, however, that Bernadette received the answer. St. Maximilian translates the scenario from Bernadette’s own deposition:

Our Lady’s identification of herself as “the” Immaculate Conception is something which goes beyond mere title: it is, rather, a state of being, referring to the very substance of a thing’s existence, a permanent state. In this regard, some orthodox theologians have gone so far as to draw an analogous comparison between this aspect of Mary’s “I am” of the Immaculate Conception to the “I AM WHO AM” of God in the Book of Exodus (3:14). In this Book, God identifies Himself to Moses as the First Cause of all, God, Whose essence and existence are one and the same: “THE” Almighty God, Who is the Creator, Preserver and Provider of all. Everything else besides God is not existence, but has existence, having received it from Him. In other words, what God IS to all that exists, Mary is, in an analogous way, to “immaculateness” itself. As noted by St. Maximilian Kolbe, she is “the Immaculata.”

It is a sad reality today that many Catholics do not know or understand the Church’s teaching on the Immaculate Conception; this is a consequence, mostly, of poor catechesis. Many will say that the Immaculate Conception refers to the virginal conception of Christ in Mary’s womb, or that it concerns the fact that Mary herself was not conceived in a natural human manner, with natural parents. These and other mistaken beliefs concerning the Immaculate Conception are not correct.

The Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception did not evolve from the Lourdes apparitions; rather, St. Bernadette’s visions were a confirmation of something the Church had already held for centuries. In 1854, some four years before the apparitions of Our Lady to young Bernadette, Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception which stated that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of Original Sin” (Ineffabilis Deus, 29). According to this doctrine, Mary was conceived in the state of perfect justice (just as Adam and Eve were created), free from Original Sin, and all its consequences and penalties, in virtue of the redemption won by Jesus Christ on the Cross. In other words, whereby the rest of humanity benefits from the Cross after the Cross, it may be said that Mary benefited from the Cross before the Cross. In this sense, the privilege of the Immaculate Conception was the anticipated fruit of Christ’s saving Passion, Death and Resurrection – indeed, of the entire Paschal Mystery!

This dogmatic teaching presented nothing new for the Church. The perfect sinlessness of Mary had, since Apostolic times, been taught by the Fathers of the Church who appealed to such Scriptural texts as Genesis 3:15 (known as the proto-Evangelium or “First Gospel”) and Luke 1:28, readings which appear in the Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th. For this Mass, the First Reading from Genesis constitutes the drama of the beginnings of Original Sin. In it, we are given a prelude as to the opposition between Eve’s descendant and Satan — the first implicit reference to the promised Redeemer: Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity and Only Begotten Son of the Eternal Father, Who took on our human nature.

In the first chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel we are told of the Annunciation, the story of Mary’s election by God to be the Mother of the Redeemer (Lk 1:26-38). This same Gospel passage is the very Gospel read for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Applied to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, the early Church Fathers taught that it was fitting that she who was to bear the Savior of the world should herself be preserved by Him from sin and its consequences and thus be the first to benefit from what He would win for the whole human race. In the East, the Church has commemorated a Feast in honor of the conception of Our Lady since the seventh century, and in the West since the ninth century. By the sixteenth century, when the Council of Trent (1545-1563) excluded Mary from Original Sin in its decree on that topic, the doctrine had become the common teaching of all theologians.

Does the teaching of the Immaculate Conception, then, imply that Mary is divine, or that she at least possesses some element of divinity? No. In fact, the very notion of “conception” per se implies a beginning in time! As taught by St. Maximilian Kolbe, “She (Mary) is called ‘Conception.’ Therefore, she is not God, Who has no beginning; neither (is she) an angel created directly by God; nor (is she) like our first parents who did not begin their existence by conception.” Mary, indeed, is human; she came forth as other children of this earth, having been born of a family and having a real father and mother. But the Church has infallibly defined that her case is different in that she was preserved from all stain of Original Sin which we inherit from our first parents by way of its being transmitted to all human generations.

What, then, does the Immaculate Conception mean for all of us? The Solemnity’s Second Reading from Ephesians is a profound revelation as to how God elected Mary — and us, too! — from all eternity. The Solemnity’s Responsorial Psalm, whereby the gathered faithful chant the words from Psalm 97, “Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous deeds!” is yet another revelation of all this. We know, of course, that Mary’s election was unique. She alone was called to be the Mother of the Incarnate Word; for this, God graced her with freedom from Original Sin from her very origins. But Mary’s election and ours both belong to the same mystery of God’s infinite love: that of redemption and a hoped for salvation for all! By preserving Mary from sin, God wished to show us that we, too, could be freed from sin. Although our freedom occurs after our birth through the rebirth of baptism, both what happened to Mary, and what happens to us, reflect God’s overwhelming, gracious love for mankind.

The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, therefore, is a day of celebration not only for Mary’s privilege, but for us too — indeed, for all human beings. For whatever God wills for one human being – Mary — God also wills for all human beings, namely, one’s entry into heaven and the beholding of the Beatific Vision for all eternity.

“Humans are weak. We go astray. Temptations of the world are continually pulling our gaze away from Christ. We fall. Whom better than His mother to be the one that is always there to help us on the way back to her Son.”

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But wouldn’t the same thing also apply to Mary?

Wouldn’t you also face the same temptations to fall away from Mary? Then you would need someone else to help you back to her?

Paul said we should be “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,”.

Jesus is the Christian’s helper. He is the one who helps the believer in temptations and helps the believer focus on God.

Why do you believe it is easier to look to Mary then to look straight to Jesus?

Who loves you more - Jesus or Mary?

But wouldn’t the same thing also apply to Mary?

Wouldn’t you also face the same temptations to fall away from Mary? Then you would need someone else to help you back to her?

No .... it is not a question of being tempted to fall away from Mary, since we don't worship her. It must sound like a broken record but Mary leads mankind to her Son. One of the best examples of this is Roy Schoeman, a Jew. He was educated by one of the top rabbis in this country. Christianity was not even a speck on his radar screen but then, one day, while vacationing at Cape Cod, he had an extraordinary experience.

As I was walking, lost in my thoughts, I found myself in the immediate presence of God. It is as though I "fell into Heaven." Everything changed from one moment to the next, but in such a smooth and subtle way that I was not aware of any discontinuity. I felt myself in the immediate presence of God. I was aware of His infinite exaltedness, and of His infinite and personal love for me. I saw my life as though I was looking back on it after death, in His presence, and could see everything which I would be happy about and everything which I would wish I had done differently. I saw that every action I had ever done mattered, for good or for evil. I saw that everything which had ever happened in my life had been perfectly designed for my own good from the infinitely wise and loving hand of God, not only including but especially those things which I at the time I thought had been the greatest catastrophes. I saw that my two greatest regrets when I died would be every moment which I had wasted not doing anything of value in the eyes of God, and all of the time and energy which I had wasted worrying about not being loved when every moment of my existence I was bathed in an infinite sea of love, although unaware of it. I saw that the meaning and purpose of my life was to worship and serve my Lord and Master, in whose presence I found myself. I wanted to know His name, so that I could worship Him properly, so that I could follow "His" religion. I remember silently praying "Tell me your name. I don't mind if You're Apollo, and I have to become a Roman pagan. I don't mind if You're Krishna, and I have to become a Hindu. I don't mind if You're Buddha, and I have to become a Buddhist. As long as You're not Christ, and I have to become a Christian!" (Jewish readers might be able to identify with this deep-rooted aversion to Christianity, based on the mistaken belief that it was the "enemy" which lay behind two thousand years of persecution of the Jews.)

As you can see, Christ Himself was the obstacle to Schoeman's conversion. But God acts in ways we least expect.

Not surprisingly, He did not tell me His name. Obviously, I wasn't ready to hear it — my resistance at the time was still too great. But I knew, from that moment on, the meaning and purpose and goal of my life; and that sense has not faded or wavered, although the immediate state of perception did.
When I got back home, everything was different. I remember calling my mother and telling her "Mom, I have good news! It's all true! You don't ever die..." only to be met with a sort of stony silence. It had never occurred to me that she might not believe me — after all, I knew from my own direct experience! Although I went back to my consulting, everything was now different, and I set out on a focused search to find my Lord and Master and God whom I had met on the beach that day.
every night before going to sleep, I would say a short prayer to know the name of my Lord and Master and God whom I had met on the beach. A year to the day after the initial experience, I went to sleep after saying that prayer, and felt as though I was woken by a gentle hand on my shoulder, and escorted to a room where I was left alone with the most beautiful young woman I could imagine. I knew without being told that she was the Blessed Virgin Mary. I felt entirely awake (and my memory is as though I had been awake), although I was dreaming. I remember my first reaction, standing there awed by her presence and grandeur, was wishing I knew at least the Hail Mary so that I could honor her! She offered to answer any questions I had. I remember thinking about what to ask, asking the questions, and her answers. After speaking to me a while longer, the audience was ended. When I woke the next morning I was hopelessly in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary, and I knew that the God I had met on the beach was Christ, and, and that all I wanted was to be as much of, and as good a, Christian as possible. I still did not know anything about Christianity, nor the difference between the Catholic Church and any of the hundreds of Protestant denominations. It took me another two years or so to find my way to the Catholic Church, guided by my love and reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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This is so typical of how Mary intervenes in our lives to draw us to her Son.

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