The Immaculate Conception

The Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, nine months before the feast of the nativity of Mary which is celebrated on September 8. It is a medical and natural fact that it normally takes nine months for a child to be born from conception to the actual birth; thus, this imputation in determining the feast day. While the “Feast of the Conception of the Most Holy and All Pure Mother of God” was celebrated by the early eastern Christian Church as early as the 5th century, it was not until 1854 that the “Immaculate Conception” was defined as infallible Catholic dogma by Pope Pius IX in his “Ineffabilis Deus.” This declaration – ex cathedra – was neither out of Scriptural proofs nor ancient tradition but from a profound “sensus fidelium” and the Magisterium.

If we were to make some layman’s sense out of this dogmatic deliberation, we can only rationalize our Catholic belief in Mary’s Immaculate Conception by this logic: that one would expect the “vessel or carrier” of the perfect and spotless sacrifice in Jesus Christ to be as spotless, perfect, and singularly holy like her Son, lest the new “Lamb of God” be tainted in any way, otherwise. This thought emanates from the Old Testament practice of offering sacrificial lambs in the temple for people’s sins and more particularly, the perfect Passover Lamb offered to God for the Jews’ final deliverance from slavery. In the same light, “Ineffabilis Deus” interprets Mary as the new Eve, (referring to Genesis), who was never corrupted and never fell, “who would be eternally at enmity with the evil serpent and completely triumphant over him.”

Viva Maria!