Suffering With Joy

Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary

December 8, 2009

Today the Church celebrates with joy the advent of our Savior, Jesus Christ, through the Immaculate Conception of His mother, Mary, in the womb of her mother, St. Anne.  We celebrate the sublime privilege by which Mary was preserved from Original Sin from the beginning of her conception by the power of God.

Immaculate Conception c.1626, Peter Pauwel Reubens, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

 A Painting for this Feast 

This beautiful painting of Our Lady under the title of “Immaculate Conception” portrays Mary as the woman of Revelations 12:1.  She is the one promised by God in Genesis 3:15.  It is one of my favorites because of the rendition of colors and technique and because of the rich symbolism Reubens included.  Great religious art is always meant to convey the truth of the revealed Word of God, and can be a great aid to prayer.  Reubens accomplished this for me as it fills my heart with joy to contemplate what God has done for us in the Blessed Virgin.

Mary in Today’s Liturgy

Mary was not only the daughter of God, she was Mother of the Son and bride of the Holy Spirit.  For this reason she could not be permitted to suffer the impurity of Original Sin, but was instead filled with grace (Lk. 1:28) from the very beginning of her conception (Cant. 4: 7). Without Original Sin, she lacked the concupiscence we all inherit from Adam and Eve and thus remained sinless throughout her life. 

At Vespers of the Divine Office today the Church chants the Magnificat antiphon:

All generations shall call me blessed, because He that is mighty hath done great things for me, alleluia.

The prayer at Mass and at the end of each hour of the Divine Office is:

O God, Who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin didst prepare a worthy dwelling-place for Thy divine Son; grant, we beseech thee, that, as by the foreseen merits of the death of this, Thy Son, Thou didst preserve her from every stain of sin, we also may, through her intercession, be cleansed from our sins and united with Thee.  Through the same Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end.  Amen.

History of the Celebration

The early Fathers of the Church taught this dogma which they inherited from the Apostles.  Dom Prosper Guerenger, the great Benedictine monastic and liturgical reformer of the 19th century, tells us in his first volume on the Liturgical Year that  

1. by the 500s, the feast was celebrated in the Eastern Church,
2. by the 700s in Spain,
3. by the 800s in Naples,
4. by the time of Charlemagne in France,
5. by 1066 in England,
6. by 1049 in Germany,
7. by 1142 in Belgium.

History shows that it was Pope Sixtus IV who published the decree for the celebration of  Our Lady’s Conception in Rome in 1476.  Pope St. Pius V included the feast in the universal edition of the Roman breviary in 1568. 

A Celebration of God’s Omnipotence and Mercy

This great and joyful feast is a celebration of God’s love and glory, His omnipotence and mercy towards man.  He knows how weak we are, and has taken pity on us.  Not only did the Father send us His Son to free us from our slavery to sin through the Immaculate Virgin, He gave us in her a loving Mother (Jn 19: 26-27) whose example of purity and fidelity to God’s will shows us the way to turn our feet. 

We who were not conceived without sin have a Brother who is God and a Mother who was without any stain of sin and is perfectly united to Him.  She is, moreover, a human being who experienced the same kinds of pain and suffering we suffer as human beings, save sin.  She knows our plight.  Whatever God the Father asks of us, no matter how difficult it seems, we can find joy and peace following the example of Mary, the human being who most closely imitated His Son, Jesus.  It pleases Him that we honor this most beautiful of His creations.  We are truly blessed.

Tags: Blessed Virgin, Divine Office, Liturgical calendar, peace and joy