Why celebrate immaculate conception

The nature of love is to be full of goodness and generosity, giving oneself completely to the other while holding nothing back. But the nature of love is also receptive. To receive completely the gift of the other both the good and bad in order that one might give back. In fact, this is the very life of the Trinity. God the Father who from eternity is completing pouring Himself out in goodness to the Son, who being all receiving can likewise return that gift for all eternity and lacking nothing.

In so doing, that gift is returned in such a profound way that we must give it a name, the Holy Spirit. This is also the life we live in marriage.

This means that Jesus cannot simply leave His complete receptivity behind when He is born of Mary. In fact, it is His complete receptivity that will allow Him to take on the very nature of Man, His human nature. Mary is the source of that human nature and the only source. This creates a problem. If Jesus is completely receptive, whatever Mary has Jesus will receive.

And that includes sin. So a paradox exists. Jesus cannot only take what He wants from Mary it is not the nature of love , He must take everything. While it may be noted that the term Immaculate Conception does not appear in scripture, scriptural allusions and a long tradition of belief in the Immaculate Conception support the dogma.

He begins by noting that the feast existed in previous forms long before the official decree. A longer history of the varied forms of devotion can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia. The Lord is with you. When the Fathers and writers of the Church meditated on the fact that the most Blessed Virgin was, in the name and by order of God himself, proclaimed full of grace[22] by the Angel Gabriel when he announced her most sublime dignity of Mother of God, they thought that this singular and solemn salutation, never heard before, showed that the Mother of God is the seat of all divine graces and is adorned with all gifts of the Holy Spirit.

To them, Mary is an almost infinite treasury, an inexhaustible abyss of these gifts, to such an extent that she was never subject to the curse and was, together with her Son, the only partaker of perpetual benediction. For those seeking more information on the Immaculate Conception, I highly encourage you to read the full document.

It is not long and is simply written in beautiful prose. It thoroughly outlines our beliefs but more importantly will renew in you a new fervor for our Blessed Mother and this great Feast. As St.

They remained faithful, and through them mankind was redeemed from sin. As St. Those who die in God's friendship and thus go to heaven will be freed from all sin and stain of sin. Even in this life, God purifies us and trains us in holiness and, if we die in his friendship but imperfectly purified, he will purify us in purgatory and render us immaculate.

By giving Mary this grace from the first moment of her conception, God showed us an image of our own destiny. He shows us that this is possible for humans by his grace. In contemplating this mystery in a Marian perspective, we can say that "Mary, at the side of her Son, is the most perfect image of freedom and of the liberation of humanity and of the universe.

It is to her as Mother and Model that the Church must look in order to understand in its completeness the meaning of her own mission" Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis conscientia, 22 March, , n. Redemptoris Mater, n. Let us fix our gaze, then, on Mary, the icon of the pilgrim Church in the wilderness of history but on her way to the glorious destination of the heavenly Jerusalem, where she [the Church] will shine as the Bride of the Lamb, Christ the Lord [ General Audience, March 14, ].

The Church only speaks of the Immaculate Conception as something that was "fitting," something that made Mary a "fit habitation" i. Thus in preparing to define the dogma, Pope Pius IX stated:.

And hence they [the Church Fathers] affirmed that the Blessed Virgin was, through grace, entirely free from every stain of sin, and from all corruption of body, soul and mind; that she was always united with God and joined to him by an eternal covenant; that she was never in darkness but always in light; and that, therefore, she was entirely a fit habitation for Christ , not because of the state of her body, but because of her original grace.

For it was certainly not fitting that this vessel of election should be wounded by the common injuries, since she, differing so much from the others, had only nature in common with them, not sin.

In fact, it was quite fitting that, as the Only-Begotten has a Father in heaven, whom the Seraphim extol as thrice holy, so he should have a Mother on earth who would never be without the splendor of holiness [ Ineffabilis Deus ].

In the United States and in a number of other countries, it is a holy day of obligation. When December 8th falls on Saturday, the precept of attending Mass is still observed in the United States, even though it will mean going to Mass two days in a row since every Sunday is also a holy day of obligation. See here for more information. If you like the information I've presented here, you should join my Secret Information Club. If you're not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

Just email me at [email protected] if you have any difficulty. Jimmy Akin Jimmy was born in Texas and grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Exact matches only. Search in title. Search in content. Search in excerpt.

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