The Immaculate Conception
of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
God’s Preparation for the Divine
Humanity
Thou
art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee!
(Canticle of Canticles 4:7)
This Scripture passage describes so beautifully God’s
masterpiece of creation, that chosen vessel, the Virgin Mary, destined from
eternity to bear God into our world.
Mary’s vocation as Theotokos, God-bearer of the Redeemer, Mother of the
Divine Humanity, is a mission that by its very purpose necessitated her singular
privilege of the Immaculate Conception. She who was to give her very flesh and blood
to the Son of the living God, the All-Holy One in Whose presence not the
slightest impurity can stand, must herself be untouched by any impurity in
order to be a fitting dwelling place for Him.
She is conceived in God’s eternal mind, the firstborn creature from the
bosom of the Father’s unfathomable love.
She is the first fruits of her own divine Son’s work of redemption. She is sanctified in the womb of her mother,
Anne, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. She is the epitome of God’s marvelous
deeds and of the extravagance of His Love.
Pope Pius IX defined this dogma of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary in his Constitution Ineffabilis Deus
on December 8, 1854 in these words:
The
Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular
privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was
preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.
Being a descendant of Adam and Eve, Mary, like us, needed
redemption. Unlike us who are cleansed
from original sin in Baptism, she was redeemed in a more exalted
fashion, preserved from original sin in anticipation of Christ’s saving
death. No sin, original or personal,
ever touched her soul. Favored with the
fullness of grace befitting her divine maternity, she who is most like the
All-Holy One exceeds all men and angels in purity. Though the angels exceed her in the order of
nature, she far surpasses them in the order of grace. She is the Queen-Mother
whom the King never refuses. She is the
woman expected from the beginning of the world, already revealed by God in the
I
will put enmity between thee and the woman and thy seed and her seed; she shall
crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.
(Genesis 3:15)
Mary and her role in God’s plan of salvation can only be
understood in the light of the Divine Humanity and in that awesome mystery that
is the beginning and end of all things, the Most Holy Trinity, our Creator, our
Redeemer and our Sanctifier. The mystery
of our Triune God is the central doctrine of our Christian Faith.
The
first Eve, mother of all the living, succumbed to the wiles of Satan and in
pride and disobedience enticed the first Adam to likewise disobey. Adam’s disobedience effected man’s separation
from God and passed on to all their posterity the effects of their sin—a
darkening of the mind and spiritual blindness; a hardening of the heart and self-absorption;
and a stubborn bending of the human will inward toward self-worship instead of
outward toward the worship of God. Sin brought suffering and death and the
closing of the gates of heaven to man. Mary,
as the new Eve, reversed the effects of the first Eve’s sin precisely by her
humility and her obedience to the will of God.
While God created us without our consent, He cannot save us without our
consent. Why? Having made us in His
image which is Love and by definition free, He made us free, knowing full well
we might choose to reject Him. And so
man, in Adam and Eve, did reject God, but God always takes the initiative. Although He will never force our free will, He
will always woo us into the desert, that sacred space deep within us that is
His alone, where everything else fails us and He alone remains, where He can
speak to our hearts. He spoke to Mary’s
heart and she said “yes,” “yes” on behalf of all the living, and God hastened
to be born amongst us in Jesus who is like us in all things but sin. Mary gives
us Jesus, and in His Divine Humanity the divine and the human are intimately
and irreversibly wed. While the
Israelites believed that no one could see the face of God and live, in Jesus
all humanity does see the Face of God and not only lives but lives ever more
abundantly.
Mary is indeed the new
This Immaculate Virgin, Our Lady of America, appeared to Sr. Mildred Marie Neuzil on
November 22 and 23, 1957 under this magnificent image that combines the Mary of
Genesis with the Mary of Revelation and identified herself as “I am Our Lady of
the Divine Indwelling, handmaid of Him Who dwells within.”
Our Lady was standing on a globe, her right foot
resting on a crescent or quarter moon, the left on the snout of a rather small
and very ugly looking dragon. I saw fire
come out of his huge jaws, but not very much, as he could not open them wide
enough because of Our Lady’s foot. At
times he seemed to be somewhat black, again of a shade of green. Our Lady was all in white. Her veil was so long that it seemed to
envelop the globe halfway. Sometimes the veil appeared so transparent that Our
Lady’s hair could be seen through it, and the hair seemed to be sparkling with
the light of many glittering stars. At
times the edges of the veil, sleeves, and garments seemed to be outlined in light. The veil was held about her head by a wreath
of white roses. Her feet were bare.
The previous day Our Lady had appeared with her hands
outstretched. At this second visit she
slowly raised them, and then crossed them on her breast rather close to her
waist. While doing so, she bent her head
slightly forward, and it seemed that her eyes were closed, not just lowered. On her breast, as though through a veil, the
Triangle and the eye which is often depicted as the symbol of the Divine
Indwelling, could be visibly seen. I
said that Our Lady’s feet were bare, that is, devoid of any kind of footwear,
but on each foot was a large white rose.
The roses, both on the feet and on the crown, were of such dazzling
whiteness that the outlines of the petals could barely be seen, sometimes not
at all. It seemed that a strong beam of
light streamed from the Divine Presence within Our Lady onto the globe at her
feet. Then halfway around the figure of Our Lady above her head appeared a
scroll on which were written in letters of gold the words: “All the glory of the King’s daughter is
within.”
The mission of Mary is the mission of all of us, to be
living tabernacles where the Presence of God might dwell and make itself
manifest in our world. As we learn to
share in her grace, may we learn to share in her prayer of praise to the
Almighty God who dwells within.
My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for
He Who is mighty has done great things for me and holy
is His name! (Luke 1: 46-47)
There are those who say we give too much honor to
Mary. The simple truth is, no one can give Mary as much honor as God Himself has.
So we entrust to your intercession, O Immaculate Mother,
Queen of our country, our lives, our families, our Church, our Nation, indeed
the whole world which is in such need of your favor and Christ’s redeeming grace. Protect us, O heavenly Lady, so pure and so
bright with the radiance of God’s light shining in and about you. Protect us from that deep abyss of evil that
is life without God and without your loving maternal care, the evil enveloping
our contemporary world. Use us, your
children of
Note: Copyrighted: Parts of this
article that are taken from the letters of Sister Mildred Mary Ephrem are
copyrighted and owned by The Contemplative Sisters of the
Indwelling Trinity