The Immaculate
Conception is very often a source of confusion for Catholics and contention for
non-Catholics. Though commonly misunderstood as referring to Christ’s
conception in Mary, it actually refers to Mary’s own conception in her mother’s
womb. From the moment of her conception, Mary was ‘by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God… preserved
free from all stain of original sin’ (Ineffabilis Deus, DS 2803), and by the
grace of God ‘remained free of every
personal sin for her whole life long’ (CCC 493). This is what we mean when
we say that Mary was without sin.
Though this dogma
is not explicitly revealed in Scripture, the angel Gabriel seemingly couldn’t
be much clearer in his greeting to her as he announces that she is to become
the mother of Christ our redeemer: ‘Hail,
full of grace’ (Luke 1:28). If Mary is full of grace, there is no room for
sin! It’s because of this lack of sin that she is truly free to be able to
respond to God’s invitation with the willing ‘fiat’ that we read of in the
subsequent lines of Scripture, because there was no sin to cloud her judgement
(CCC 491). Just like us, whose human nature has been deprived of God’s
supernatural grace because of original sin, Mary was in need of redemption
through her son Jesus, but in a unique way was redeemed in advance, as it were,
by being preserved from sin from the beginning, and enriched by a ‘gift of sublime grace’ for her role as
Mother of God (Lumen Gentium, 53). In other words, she was saved from sin
before sin could occur.
St Paul’s teaching
that ‘the wages of sin are death’
literally means that sin separates us from God, in whom is the fullness of
life. A woman living in this state of separation from God could not possibly
conceive God Himself in her womb, and therefore we must conclude that the
Mother of God had to be free from sin. Mary’s Immaculate Conception is
necessary for our salvation because it is by the grace that preserved her from
sin that she was able to conceive and bear Jesus, our Saviour, and so to share
in His salvific mission on earth.
‘In the soul of this
"daughter of Sion" there is manifested, in a sense, all the
"glory of grace," that grace which "the Father...has given us in
his beloved Son."’ (Redemptoris Mater, 8).
Though full of
grace and blessed by God to a ‘special and exceptional degree’ (RM, 8), we
mustn’t forget that Mary remained human like us! Mary holds out to us a perfect
model of what we are all ultimately called to in Christ: a life without sin,
and full of grace! She reveals to us the fullness of the grace that is
available to us in Christ Jesus. She shows us what Jesus meant went He urged us
to ‘be holy, because I am holy’ (1
Peter 1:16). In this way she inspires and challenges us to reach the heights of
holiness which we were created for, knowing that we will inevitably fall –
alas, we are not ‘full of grace’ – but should never tire of pressing on ‘toward the goal for the prize of the
heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 3:14).
