The dogma of the Immaculate Conception
The Immaculate Conception of Mary is the dogma of faith that declares that, by a special grace of God, She was preserved from all sin from her conception.
The year 2024 will celebrate the 170th anniversary of the Proclamation of the Dogma that Mary was conceived without original sin, without stain. The dogma was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854, in his bull Ineffabilis Deus.
“…we declare, proclaim and define that the doctrine that maintains that the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved immune from any stain of original guilt in the first instant of her conception by singular grace and privilege of God Almighty, in attention to the merits of Christ Jesus Savior of the human race, is revealed by God and must therefore be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful… ” Pius IX, bull Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, (1854)
The Conception: It is the moment in which God creates the soul and infuses it in the organic matter coming from the parents. Conception is the moment when human life begins. Mary was preserved from all lack of sanctifying grace since she was conceived in the womb of her mother Saint Anne, that is, Mary is “full of grace” from her conception. When we speak of the Immaculate Conception, we are not referring to the conception of Jesus, who, of course, was also conceived without sin.
“Ineffable God, (…) having provided from all eternity the most regrettable ruin of the entire human race that was to derive from Adam’s guilt, and having determined, in the mystery hidden from all centuries, to culminate the first work of his kindness for
Through the incarnation of the Word (…), he chose and marked from the beginning and before all centuries his only begotten Son, a Mother, so that, made flesh of Her, he might be born in the happy plenitude of time; and I loved her so much above all creatures, that only in her was she pleased with the most signal benevolence.
As the previous words of Pius IX indicate, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is a marvelous mystery of love. The Church was discovering it little by little, as time went by. Centuries passed before it was defined as a dogma of faith.
Let us therefore turn our gaze in this season of Advent to Mary, who conscientiously prepared the first and true Advent. Nobody like her knew how to interpret the signs of the times, feeling that the Lord was near, she prayed like nobody else with Psalm 24:
“Discover to us, Lord, your ways, guide us with the truth of your doctrine. You are our God and savior and we have our hope in you”
And when motherhood was proposed to her, nothing less than the very Son of God, she did not want to say no. His life was a resounding “yes” to God’s plans.
Being She, with her yes, who caused the distant God to become ours, and from the incarnation of his Son, God had another title that he did not have before: Emmanuel”, the God with us, the Savior, the one who put his shop between us
It seems that we would have to expand on Mary until the last week of Advent, but who better than Her to open and dispose hearts so that this Christmas does not have the characteristics of being just another party, or rather the party of parties, where there are of everything, but where many times an emptiness is felt, not so much because of the things that could not be arranged for the party and the celebration, but precisely because the heart has not been prepared, to make Advent there, the arrival, the reception and welcome for the newborn.
Christmas will then be an anticipated celebration of the Lord’s Passover. Without his incarnation, neither surrender, nor redemption, nor the cross would have been possible; but not the Resurrection and the return of the children of God to the house, to the Kingdom, to the loving arms of the good Father God. Christmas will bring us together around the Divine Child, it will make us sympathize and be moved by the sight of who becomes the closest presence of the God of Heaven, and of earth.
Mary is an early sign: of cleanliness, beauty, holiness, perfection, fullness, new life, Easter victory. It is an advance of the human ideal, of the project that God had dreamed for man. A model, therefore, for each human person, for each believer, for the Church, for humanity. What we dream and desire so much is possible, in Mara it has already been realized.
Cheerful dawn. When the first lights of the day appear, when it dawns or morning, we admire the color tones that overcome the night darkness, and we rejoice. The light, in addition to offering us clarity, fills us with joy. This is how the Immaculate Virgin is, a soft light that announces victory over sin and death, a sure sign that the day is coming, good news for all the children of the night, cause of our joy.
True joy, because it guarantees us salvation and victory. After so many failures, after so many defeats, we can finally raise our heads. The power of darkness has been overcome. In the mother a point of light appears first, like a flower, but the light grows until it becomes enchanting. It is a gift, not only for the eyes, but for the whole soul.
But the dawn is only an advertisement, it has no identity of its own, it is an advance of another original reality, which is the sun. The dawn is not the day, but announces it, prepares it. Its lights and colors are not its own, but from the sun. The dawn is something relative, without the sun nothing would be. So is Mary in relation to Christ, our day and our sun.
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