“Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” Picture the scene: Jesus has just impressed a crowd and a woman, probably a mother, shouts out: “You must of had a wonderful mother!” Jesus responds something to this effect: “Yes, I had a wonderful mother, though in ways you don’t imagine. She was wonderful not because she gave me biological birth, all mothers do that. What made her a great mother is that she gave me birth in the faith.”
Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary which acknowledges the long-held belief that Mary was preserved from original sin from the moment of her conception, a foundational mystery of salvation.
Pope Pius IX in 1854 defined the dogma of the “Immaculate Conception of Mary” to codify the centuries of belief, from scripture passage like “Hail, full of grace” and writings from the early Church Fathers who called Mary “spotless” and “immaculate.”
Mary is the ultimate disciple, one who fully cooperated with God’s grace, and whose life helps us understand our own calling to give flesh to faith. Mary, too, needed Jesus as her Savior, but her preservation from sin from the first instant (the Immaculate Conception) was a unique work of God’s grace, not something she merited.
The Immaculate Conception isn’t just about Mary; it’s a sign for us that God wants us to be holy, to be filled with His grace, and to overcome the “immaculate deceptions” of our own pride and ego.
Mary’s Immaculate Conception provides profound hope and a vision of what God intends for humanity—a pure vessel to bring Christ into the world, echoing the Church’s universal hope in salvation.{Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Mary as a Model of Faith” December 2003]
