In Advent, as we move toward the Christmas season, it is natural to take time to celebrate the role which the Blessed Virgin Mary played and still plays in our faith. As mother of Jesus, her “Yes” represents all of our “Yes’s” to do what God asks of us. Her Magnificat (“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord”) is an invitation to each of us to see the greatness of the Lord at work in our own lives. But, of all the feasts connected to the Blessed Virgin Mary in Catholic liturgical life and doctrine, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which always occurs during the Advent season, has for me always been the most problematic. On the other hand, understood properly, this feast day and its underlying meaning protect a profound understanding of how the grace of God works in human history and is really the ideal Advent feast.
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates how God’s grace brought about that moment of history where Mary was conceived, as the doctrine says, “without the stain of Original Sin.” [NB: this feast is about Mary’s conception, not Jesus’!] ‘Original Sin’ refers scripturally to the story of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden resulting in their expulsion from paradise. Although we do not read it as literal history any longer but rather as an imaginative story of faith which contains deep truths about our human relationships with God and creation, for most of Christian history it was simply taken at face value. Because it is obvious that we do not live in such a paradise now, the consequences of Adam’s sin must have been passed on to all humans. There was no agreement on how this happened (although given the Church’s less than positive view of sexuality for much of its history, it was often thought to come somehow through sexual intercourse), only that all who were born into the world—except for Jesus himself—were marked by Original Sin and therefore in need of God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ.
Why is it problematic to exclude Mary from the reality of Original Sin? For one thing, the Immaculate Conception of Mary is a dogma that was highly disputed even into the modern era. It is well known that Thomas Aquinas, and the Dominican theologians in general, argued against this doctrine. Because of the influence of St. Augustine in the theology of the western church which connected original sin to the physical process of sexual intimacy leading to conception, it was very difficult for them to see how Mary was not “born with original sin” just like every other human. Also, unlike theologians who argued in favor of this doctrine (many of them Franciscans, the most prominent being Duns Scotus), Thomas and the Dominicans did not see the need to have Mary so conceived in order to “protect” the conception of Jesus as immaculate as well, since he was conceived without an act of intercourse. Also, to say Mary had no original sin seemed to be saying that she didn’t need to be redeemed by the grace of God through Jesus, an idea contrary to the gospel. For other theologians, however, it was inconceivable that God would not have prepared Mary from the first moment of her life to be the “purest vessel” for the eventual conception and birth of Jesus, and so she was granted that singular grace no other human in history had ever experienced. But with that interpretation the doctrine opens up all sorts of theological conundrums as to when and why God does nor does not intervene in history with a variety of singular graces. In the end it was left as an “open or disputed” question, with the pro-immaculate conception of Mary gaining ascendancy in the western Church, finally achieving the status of a dogma in 1854, when Pope Pius IX declared this doctrine as one to be infallibly held by the Church.
However, such a declaration by the Pope was also problematic on various levels. This doctrine gets defined by Pope Pius as a dogma four years before Bernadette has her apparitions at Lourdes, where she says Mary appeared to her under the title of the Immaculate Conception. These apparitions rather conveniently, seemingly, confirm the appropriateness of the dogma, even though there was no huge movement in the Church for or against the dogma, which would have led to a need to clarify the doctrine. Moreover, it allowed Pope Pius to exercise papal teaching authority in a way that asserted the Pope’s ability to proclaim as authentic dogma something from our faith tradition on his own authority, after consulting the bishops of the world. This process would become the basis for the exercise of papal infallibility as defined later at the First Vatican Council in 1871. Why is this problematic? This assertion of papal authority comes precisely at a time when his secular powers with the Papal States is in decline. The doctrine becoming a dogma, then, is seemingly tied as much or more to papal and ecclesiastical politics as to a real existential need to have the doctrine defined as dogma.
On the other hand, though acknowledging these problematic issues, for Catholics the Immaculate Conception of Mary is a defined dogma. That means we believe it contains or protects some essential aspect of our faith. What, then, is that essential aspect? I think the best way to understand it is to think through what this doctrine means for how the grace of God works in human history. When we focus on this dogma as something about Mary alone—that is, tied only to honoring the Blessed Virgin as its main focus—we miss how all Marian doctrines and dogmas are not just about honoring Mary. They also safeguard something about our understanding of Jesus Christ and salvation as well as open up a deeper understanding of our own human lives of discipleship. As mentioned, in Catholic thought and piety the Immaculate Conception of Mary is often depicted as a one-time ‘miracle of grace’, especially bestowed on Mary in light of who she was to be. God is able to do whatever God wills, and why is it such a stretch to believe God would want Mary to have this singular honor? But then why just Mary? Why not her parents and the whole lineage that leads to Mary? Wouldn’t it have been more worthy of the divine Messiah to have a lineage never touched by Original Sin?
It would be better to understand this dogma as affirming not simply a “one-time” miracle but a sign of how God’s grace is at work in all of creation and all of human history in such a way that no distortion caused by human weakness and sin is stronger than God’s desire and ability to save us. God is able to weave together all the strands of human history in such a way, even the negative history tied to the passing on of Original Sin, that in the course of human history there came a moment in time (in Mary’s conception) where original sin had no ability to take hold. The dogma on the Immaculate Conception affirms, then, that despite the power of sin and the harm and distortion caused by sin, God’s grace is more original than sin, more powerful than sin, and God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ will ultimately triumph. The importance of Mary being conceived without Original Sin (rather than just Jesus) means that human history is affirmed as the vehicle through which the fullness of salvation will come about. If only Jesus was so conceived, then human history is essentially meaningless, simply awaiting the mysterious decision of God to intervene at some random moments. But, if Mary is without Original Sin, then all of human history is important, has been the vehicle of God’s grace coming to fullness in Jesus Christ, and will continue to be the vehicle for through which God’s grace will bring salvation to all.
Moreover, what was true of Mary is available to each of us as well by God’s grace. In Mary, the Immaculate One, a perfect coalescing of life comes together that allows her conception to be unaffected by Original Sin. At baptism we become “immaculate ones” as well, where Original Sin no longer has any claim on who we are. All that has made us who we are—our genetic heritage, social-economic-cultural family background, no matter how good or messed up—is brought together into a healed whole. We become sinless, just like Mary. Unlike Mary we tend not to sustain that reality for too long. But each time we repent and seek forgiveness God’s grace brings us back into a healed whole.
That is what makes the Immaculate Conception of Mary an ideal Advent feast. Each year at this time we re-examine how ready we are for the coming of Jesus Christ into our world. We acknowledge all the strands of our personal and communal histories that have been less than faithful to the gospel. We look out a world that is on the verge of destroying itself through war, ethnic conflicts, excessive consumption of resources, non-equitable access to the basic goods needed for everyone to live dignified human lives, excessive focus on individual satisfaction and happiness, lust for power, and more. As we do so, this feast reminds us that such sinful brokenness, though it looks unstoppable, does not have ultimate power. Even the most messed up aspects of human history have the ability to come together into a reconciled whole through the grace of God, if we allow ourselves to be instruments of God’s grace. That means continual conversion on our part. A commitment to let our baptismal identity guide all the other identities we have—ethnic, familial, vocational, economic, social, political, cultural. Only then will the effects of Original Sin be overcome, and history reflect more fully the presence of God’s grace.
The Advent prayer or cry “Come, Lord Jesus” then becomes what it is meant to be. Not simply a prayer for a nostalgic remembering of the Christ child at Christmas. Not a prayer for the end of the world or to escape the real hardship that is in the world. But a prayer of trust that God in Christ can bring together even the most horrible strands of our history in a way that grace triumphs over all sin. And a prayer of gratitude that in our baptism and living our baptismal identities, God has made us, like Mary, “immaculate ones” full of grace, able to conquer any or all effects of Original Sin, living as beacons of hope in this world.
[As a final word, please note that I have put on the website, under the “Pamphlets” tab, a small booklet titled “A Catholic Understanding of Mary” for further reading that I have used for adult formation talks.]